Cinema Canada (Jun-Jul 1976)

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Ce ae
June/July 1976
Third Edition, number 29

Editor/Publisher: Jean-Pierre and
Connie Tadros. Associate Editor: Na-
talie Edwards. Board of Editors: Ste-
phen Chesley, Clive Denton, Natalie
Edwards, George Csaba Koller, Con-
nie Tadros. Art Direction: Louis
Charpentier. Copy Editor: Charles
Shannon. Advertising Manager: June
Pike. Subscriptions: Nicole Marchand.
Correspondents: Chuck Lapp (Halifax),
Peter Bryant (Vancouver), Len Klady
(Winnipeg). Contributors: Robert Rou-
veroy (Rough Cut), Rodger Ross (Tech
News).

Cinema Canada, founded by the Canadian
Society of Cinematographers, is published
by the Cinema Canada Magazine Founda-
tion. President: George Csaba Koller, Vice-
President: Jean-Pierre Tadros, Secretary-
Treasurer: Connie Tadros, Directors: Agi
Ibranyi-Kiss and George Campbell Miller.
Editorial information: All manuscripts,
drawings and photographs submitted must
be accompanied by a self-addressed stamp-
ed envelope. While the editors will take all
reasonable care, they will not be held re-
sponsible for the loss of any such submis-
sions. Opinions expressed within the mag-
azine are those of the author and not neces-
sarily those of the editors. Cinema Canada
is indexed in the Film Literature Index
(Albany) and International Index to Film
Periodicals. Member of the Canadian
Periodical Publishers’ Association. No part
of this magazine may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photo-
copying, recording, or by any information
storage and retrieval system, without per-
mission in writing from the Publisher. Cine-
ma Canada Magazine Foundation is a non-
profit organization: Canadian Charitable Or-
ganization no. 044-1998-2213. Published
with the financial assistance of the Canada
Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the
City of Toronto. Second class mail regis-
tration no. 3081, return postage guaranteed

Subscription rates for ten _ issues
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include your old address as printed
on a recent issue. For subscriptions
write to Box 398, Station Outremont,
Montreal H2V 4N3, P.Q.

406 Jarvis St.

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Box 398, Outremont Station,
Montreal H2V 4N3

(514) 272-5354

R.P.1. Photo Arts
RESOURCE CENTRE

CONTENTS

A collage from the International Film Festival

at Cannes, photos by Federico. If you can put names
to the faces, see p. 9 for a contest. There may be
a free subscription in it for you!

Cover

4 Reverb

Film News
Ontario
Quebec

Prairies

ole ole er)

11 Organizations

12 Tech News by Rodger J. Ross
Color Temperature and Its Measurement

15 Rough Cut by Robert Rouveroy c.s.c.

18 Historical Notes by Peter Morris
The First Films in Canada

21 Cannes 1976

Connie Tadros 22 Commercial Results

Marc Gervais 24 #£xThe Year of the Kangaroo

Natalie Edwards § 28 Going Up An Interview With Barry Greenwald

More Important Than Cannes?
The American Film Festival

Ben Achtenberg 32

Natalie Edwards 36
Ronald Blumer
Gary Evans

Three Viewpoints on the Grierson Seminar

42 Special Events Ottawa 76

43 Book Reviews

43. Canadian Feature Films 1964-1969
reviewed by Clive Denton

43 Six European Directors: Essays on _ the
Meaning of Film Style
reviewed by Eleanor Beattie

44 Canadian Federation of Film Societies Index
reviewed by Douglas S. Wilson

46 Film Reviews
Echoes of a Summer by Joan Irving

47 Reviews of Short Films

49 Capsules

June-July 1976/3

REVERB

Our Thanks

Although we did not see the material you
ran about MPL Table Talk in a recent issue,
we have had several requests for Table Talk
with notations that they had read about our
series in your magazine.

Thank you very much.

Lynn Bigbee

Publications Editor
Motion Picture Laboratories, Inc.

Opinion vs. News

Stephen Chesley’s statement that the film
made _ by Insight Productions for the La-
Marsh commission on violence in the media
“blatantly advocates” censorship does not,
I feel, belong in the Film News section in
which it appeared (no. 26).

The statement, whatever its merits, is not
a news item but an opinion, and as such, I
feel, would be more appropriate in a review,
an “Opinion” column, or in a feature article
of opinion.

My own view is that Reflections on Vio-
lence presents a mass of mutually exclusive
viewpoints on violence in the media in a
relatively balanced alternation of sequences
which leaves viewers free to respond how-
ever they like.

An example of this balance is seen in the
ending. Although the final sequence in the
film is devoted to psychiatrist Vivian Ra-
koff’s rhetorical question concerning the ef-
fects of media violence on “one’s percep-
tions and expectations of the world,” the
sequence just before it features Gordon Sin-
clair, who comments, “The idea that we
should bea bunch of pablum-fednamby-pam-
bies is nonsense to me.” Rakoff’s advantage
as the last speaker in the film is compen-
sated for, in this case, by Sinclair’s more
powerful camera presence, which he has
perfected over years of broadcasting.

Some viewers say the film openly sup-
ports censorship. Others see the film as a
bare-faced espousal of Gordon Sinclair’s
view that “Violence is damn well enter-
taining... and you’re not going to stamp it
out.”

This range of reactions to the film af-
firms, in a way, one of my favourite apho-
risms, which is that ‘“‘We see the world not
as it is but as we are.”’

Jaan Pill

Inaceuracy
and Omission

Writings on the history of film in this
country have traditionally suffered from

4/ Cinema Canada

the twin failings of inaccuracy and omis-
sion brought about partly through inade-
quate research and _ cross-checking and
partly as a consequence of the notoriously
fragmentary and scattered state of primary
source materials on the subject. Unfortu-
nately, once committed to print, a statement
tends to assume an aura of veracity which
can prove difficult to dispel. Hence errors
and misconceptions as well as facts are
passed along from writer to writer until it
becomes difficult to distinguish between
them.

I am disappointed to find that Cinema
Canada has allowed itself to perpetuate
this tradition. I refer in particular to the
piece “The First Films In Canada’, by
Gary Evans, which appeared in the Histo-
rical Notes column, issue no. 26. It is a
prime example of the sort of historical
writing which does as much to confuse as
to clarify an issue.

In an effort to undo the damage done,
permit me to enumerate the errors imme-
diately evident:

Paragraph 1:

“1896 was the year of the first film
show in Canada.”

— To be exact, 1896 was the year of the
first motion picture projection in Cana-
da. Films had been on view in this
country through the medium of the Ki-
netoscope (a peep-show machine) since
1894.

“Ottawa used the Edison Kinetoscope...”’
— The machine in question — the Edison

projector — was known as the Vitascope,

the Kinetoscope being a viewing machine
only.

Paragraph 2:

“The first claim... was by Jack Green,
magician, whose Ottawa show occurred in
June, 1896, on an Edison Kinetoscope...”’

— In fact, this particular show took place a
month later. Green himself used to
claim variously that it had occurred on
June 15 or 16, but contemporary news-
paper reports indicate that it took place
on July 21.

— Green’s actual role in this showing should
be clarified. In 1896 the Ottawa Street
Railway Co. extended its line out to
West End Park at Britannia. In order
to drum up business they arranged for
a film presentation using the Edison
Vitascope, which they leased from its
Canadian concessionaires, the Holland
brothers. As an added attraction the
company engaged the itinerant magician,
Belzac (John Green), for the first two
weeks of the presentation, which ran
until the end of August. His place in
the program was subsequently filled by
a variety of other performers. Although
Green later did become an exhibitor —
and his story is a colorful one — he was
not himself responsible for the first
Ottawa presentation of the Vitascope.

Paragraph 3:
a “2 also that only one other machine
was in operation at that time in New York.”’

— Assuming that this is a quote from
Green’s letter as it appeared in Cana-
dian Film Weekly Yearbook, 1951, p.
25, it should read:

“... also that only one other machine was
in operation at that time in New York at
the Eden Musee, if my memory serves me
right.”

— The omission of Green’s qualifier, ‘‘if
my memory serves me right’’, tends to
give an unnecessary force of conviction
to what turns out to be an erroneous
statement anyway. The projector which
made its American debut simultaneously
at the Eden Musee and Keith’s Union
Square Theater on June 29, 1896, was
the Lumiere Cinématographe, not the
Vitascope.

Paragraph 4:

“First four films — four colored boys
eating watermelon, Black Diamond Express
running 80 miles an hour, the New York
Central Railway, a betting scene at Atlantic
City, and La Loie Fuller doing the Butter-
fly Dance...”

— Again, if this a quote from Canadian

Film Weekly Yearbook, “... a betting
scene...” should read “....a bathing
scene...”

— As for the films shown, contemporary
accounts vary considerably, but none
bears more than a superficial resem-
blance to the list cited by Green. This is
none too surprising since the Green
recollections cited date from almost
half a century after the fact.

Paragraphs 5 &6: :

— The Guay/Vermette exhibition of Lumi-
ere films and machinery is alluded to in
several accounts of early Canadian ex-
hibition, but none of the allusions bears
either a concrete date or reference to
any primary source. Ouimet’s claim to
have seen the Lumiére equipment in
Montreal early in 1896 seems unlikely.
The Lumiére Cinématographe made its
U.S. public debut on June 29, 1896 and
was shown at the Toronto Industrial
Exhibition (later the C.N.E.) at the end
of August. This latter showing was re-
viewed in the Toronto Mail and Empire
on Sepember 7, 1896: ‘‘... The invention
is a French one, made by M.M. Lumiere
(sic) of Lyons, and — with the exception,
I believe, of New York — has never
before been shown upon this continent —
certainly never before in Canada.” (my
emphasis)

Paragraph 8:

“He would open Montreal’s first success-
ful cinema in 1900 and within a few years
was one of North America’s wealthiest ex-
hibitors of film entertainment.”

— Ouimet opened the first Ouimetoscope
on January 1, 1906. This is a particu-
larly inexcusable error in that it con-
tradicts statements made in an earlier
issue of Cinema Canada, and bears the
added distinction of an editorial footnote
referring to the contradicted material.

— There is much evidence concerning Er-
nest Ouimet, but none to suggest that
he was particularly wealthy, much less
one of North America’s wealthiest exhi-
bitors. If anything the evidence as it
stands would seem to suggest the con-
trary.

Paragraph 9:

“Perhaps after all, it is not important
to establish historical firsts, for in terms
of the film industry and film commerce,
it was Edison’s company which established
itself firmly in the new North American
market and attained a position of predomi-
nance, including a leading position in the
infant newreel industry.”

— If anything, this article does demonstrate
the importance of establishing historical
firsts. The importance lies not so much
in their distinction as “firsts” but in
their accurate establishment, forming
a firm base for the construction of a
true historical account.

— Regarding Mr. Evans’ contention re the
Edison Co., I would strongly suggest
that he re-read his American film his-
tory. While Canadian film history is
inadequately documented, American film
history is relatively well established,
leaving little excuse for such naive over-
simplification.

In closing I would like to draw attention
to the advertising material reproduced along
with the article. The failure to identify
these items renders tham thoroughly irre-
levant to the article (they would bear little
relevance to it even if identified) and ne-
gates their value as a part of the body of
historical source material readily available
to the public. This reduction of historical
documents to the status of decoration would

seem to indicate a rather superficial
approach to film history. This too I find
disappointing. oe =

Speen Michie Mitchell
Evans replies:

My thanks to Peter Morris and Michie
Mitchell for setting the historical record
straight regarding the conflicting claims
for the first film projection in Canada. I
came across the two sources I quoted at the
Centre de Documentation Cinématographique
of the Bibliothéque Nationale, Montréal.
Both were in the unfinished and unpublish-
ed manuscript of a book which Hye Bossin,
editor of Canadian Film Weekly, was writ-
ing on the history of the film in Canada for
the National Film Board in the early ’50s.

Jack Green’s 1944 account of the event
was written in his own hand in a letter to
Bossin. The letter which Mr. Mitchell
quotes appeared seven years later in the
Canadian Film Weekly Yearbook. It is ap-
parent that some time between 1944 and
1951 Green modified his 1944 letter, but

with the exception of the typographical er-
ror “bathing” not “betting”, I am not
guilty of having misquoted the gentleman.

Bossin’s version of the Ouimet account
seems to have been proven now to be his-
torically inaccurate and I join Mr. Morris
and Mr. Mitchell in committing it to the
dustbin of history. I am especially looking
forward to reading Mr. Morris’s and Mr.
Co’s History of Canadian Film.

To correct Mr. Mitchell’s misreading
of my statement about the position of pre-
dominance which the Edison Company at-
tained, I refer him to Raymond Fielding’s
The American Newsreel 1911-1967. Field-
ing states that Edison, Biograph and Vita-
graph were the major producers of news
films in this early period. “Such evidence
that survives — copyright records. news-
Paper accounts, reminiscences, and _ the
like — indicates that Edison was far and
away the most prolific producer of news
films during the pre-1900 period.’ (page
16) It was these companies (and Edison’s
in particular) to which I was referring
when I mentioned the infant newsreel in-
dustry in North America and not Pathé
Freres. Newsreel, Vitagraph’s Monthly of
Current Events or the Gaumont Animated
Weekly which dominated the market a
decade later.

Finally, I would like to call attention to
the excellent film library of the Centre de
Documentation Cinématographique, located
at 350 McGill Street, Montreal. While much
of their primary source material remains
uncatalogued, I uncovered a significant a-
mount of material related to the documenta-
ry film movement, John Grierson and the
early years of the National Film Board.
Desides the 13,500 volumes on film and
film-related subjects, the library has sorie
450 periodicals, including a number of
complete collections of early film maga-
zines. This treasure of information is under
the direction of M. Pierre Allard.

Gary Evans

Historical research is an arduous and
delicate thing, and new truths are always
possible. Both Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Mor-
ris (who contributes to Historical Notes in
this issue) chose to respond to Mr. Evans’
article. They, however, do not agree upon
the spelling of John Green’s name; is it
“Belsaz’’ the Magician or “Belzac’’ the
Magician? We trust that one will write us
a letter next month to clarify the question
and that we can brighten up a long, hot sum-
mer with the continuing debate over the
first film to be seen in Canada. — Ed.

Of Programme
and Colour

In order to leave no possible doubt in the
minds of Cinema Canada readers I would
like to clarify a couple of points pertaining
to the March issue (no. 26).

Although I am listed (page 3) as a contri-
butor (Historical Notes) it should not be as-
sumed that I have an editorial function in
relation to this column. I do not. To be more
explicit, I had not seen the contribution of
Mr. Gary Evans and was totally ignorant
of its contents.

My second point concerns the item for
which I was responsible (page 41) which
did not appear in its original form. Six
months ago, when I was first asked to
contribute to Cinema Canada, I was given
a style sheet which specified English spel-
ling. As submitted my contribution conform-
ed to this standard. The change to American
spelling was done without my knowledge,
much less my consent. I have since been
given to understand that this is to be
standard from now on.

I am, to say the least, surprised that
Cinema Canada, for all its pious pronoun-
cements on Canadian content, should choose
to adopt American spelling and this at a
time when more and more Canadians are
manifesting their rising consciousness of
the cultural and economic domination exer-
cised over them by the United States.

Dare I, as a ‘new’ Canadian, add that
this initiative seems to me to be particular-
ly unfortunate considering that the editors
of Cinema Canada are ‘new’ Canadians.

The question of Canadian content brings
me to the cryptic box on page 9. Now real-
ly! If you have an answer to the accusations
leveled by this sister publication which
must remain nameless — and I’m sure -you
have — just print it, tell us all who it’s
aimed at, and get it over. Or forget it!

An uneasy conscience? As the bard put
it, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a
crown.” Yes indeed. And well it might.

D. John Turner

D. John Turner has always been listed
among the contributors to Cinema Canada
and never among the editorial staff. It is
clear that contributors have no responsibi-
lity for articles except those which carry
their byline. Out of courtesy, he was in-
formed that Mr. Evans’ article was to be
run since he, Mr. Turner, had contributed
nothing to Historical Notes for two months.

In all, the editors changed the spelling
of two words in his article: programme
and colour became, respectively, program
and color. Despite our specific request to
contributors to use English spelling, over
80% insist on using American spelling and
the time spent changing copy and the risk
of increased typographical error made us
abandon the use of English spelling. There
are more important battles to be fought...
Mr. Turner was, however, sent the galleys
of his article and was aware of the changes
before the article was printed.

“New Canadians,” yes; and aside from
the Indians and Eskimos, we're all new
Canadians, aren’t we?

Yes, some do seem to have an uneasy
conscience. We have responded to our sister
publication and the response is available to
all who want it. In our opinion, the debate
didn’t merit space in the pages of Cinema
Canada.— Ed.

June-July 1976/5

Major Developments

BRYCE COMMISSION: Wan-
dering about the country at the
moment is a very curious royal
commission, the Bryce Commis-
sion looking into corporate con-
centration in Canada. Early in
February it came into contact
with the film industry, specifical-
ly the distribution and exhibition
sides, as the Council of Cana-
dian Filmmakers presented a
brief in writing. And on April 27
the commission asked the CCFM
to elaborate its brief in person
at the Toronto hearings. What
followed was an educational ex-
perience for the commissioners,
as they were initiated into some
of the eccentricities and intrica-
cies of film biz. And that’s what
they wanted; not numbers but
principles, and information as to
how the system works and what
the iniquities are.

The CCFM explained that film
distribution and exhibition in
this country is a classic exam-
ple of market control by too few
companies. Add the fact that the
companies are mainly foreign-
owned, and you have an impene-
trable wall facing the Canadian
production industry. The CCFM
was not prepared to follow
through with their facts and pro-
pose solutions (quota, levy), but
Bryce insisted, saying that the
parameters of his inquiry are
set by him, not some pre-
ordained limits. Sandra Gather-
cole and Kirwan Cox, represent-
ing the CCFM, brought along
John Rocca who, as has been
outlined in Cinema Canada, also
has a beef with the major exhi-
bitors and distributors, and he
outlined his experience.

On the other side (or mostly
in the audience) were the major
distributors, and up on the stand
were George Destounis, Harry
Blumson, and, via letters, the
Canadian Motion Picture Distri-
butors’ Association and Bellevue
Film Distributors. Their main
complaint this time was the
CCFM’s figures, and Famous
Players asked to present a
further brief (they had present-

-ed one earlier during the com-
mission’s Montreal hearings).

The overall impression is that
the commission reacted strong-
ly to the CCFM and Bryce has
asked for further information.
The process is far from over.

6/ Cinema Canada

FILIYI NEWS

CRTC: Meanwhile in Ottawa,
the 50th Anniversary Convention
of the Canadian Association of
Broadcasters was taking place,
and up stepped new Communica-
tions Minister Jeanne Sauvé to
chastise them for not curtailing
violence or developing alterna-
tive types of Canadian programs,
and at the same time to make a
crucial announcement regarding
a possible change in _ policy:
broadcast outlets may be able to
participate financially in cable
systems in their own cities. The
CRTC has tried to prevent such
a crossover, but the intention
now is to allow the cable profits
to be applied to producing Cana-
dian programs; the intention,
says Sauvé, is to preserve pro-
fits and Canadian identity, be-
cause “if there is a singular
problem today, it is the domina-
tion of our airwaves and our
cable systems by American pro-
grams.”

The request for more Cana-
dian emphasis was repeated by
CRTC Chairman Harry Boyle,
and neither he nor Sauvé exactly
brought joy to the broadcasters’
eyes. But as they heard what
was happening in Toronto, they
probably cried. For as owners
of the outlets for broadcasting,
they were presented with a new
adversary: pay-TV was_ being
started in Toronto.

PAY-TV is booming in the US,
where it has over 650,000 sub-
scribers now, and that should
reach a million in 1976; 42 per
cent of cable customers in Man-
hattan take pay-TV. And ironi-
cally one of the first pay-TV ex-
periments was in Toronto some
dozen years ago; it failed, pro-
bably because Toronto receives
so many stations already that
pay-TV offered no real alterna-
tive. And going out was much
cheaper then.

But now it’s back, and a direct
challenge is being presented to
the CRTC on two fronts. In one
self-contained group of apart-
ment buildings, an unlicensed
company is putting signals into
residents’ homes, but they aren’t
technically under CRTC cover-
age because they aren’t using an
antenna, whether master (MA-
TV) or cable (CATV). Two To-
ronto cable companies saw this
move and, in direct contraven-
tion of CRTC guidelines, have

together formed a third compa-
ny to place signals in the apart-
ments of two huge buildings
downtown.

Both companies will initially
offer recent feature films sup-
plied by an American firm: that
means no Canadian content and
most of the money leaving the
country. The CRTC has been
against pay-TV because it can
take away audiences from regu-
lar channels, especially Cana-
dian ones, thus lowering reve-
nues as it splits the audience
even further than the cable and
station expansion has done. At
the broadcasters’ convention
Boyle mentioned that the CRTC
recognizes the coming of pay-
TV as inevitable, but although he
urged Canadians to acquire con-
trol of it before it’s too late, he
offered no idea of how the CRTC
will cope with the problem.

One result may be that Cana-
dian film companies will make
features for pay-TV, and they’ll
be included in the packages of
foreign features for broadcast.
That, however, also sounds fa-
miliar, sort of what has happen-
ed in the theatrical film indus-
try. As of the beginning of May,
that’s how it all stands: confu-
sion in the midst of action.

Stephen Chesley

PAY-TELEVISION: The ground
rules for the commencement of
pay-television service in Can-
ada were laid out in speeches
by Communications Minister
Jeanne Sauvé and CRTC Chair-
man Harry Boyle at the annual
meeting of the Canadian Cable
Television Association held in
Toronto June 2.

Mme. Sauvé put forward
three objectives and_ three
options for achieving them. She
then asked for opinions from
the public by September 1, 1976.

The objectives: ‘First, it
must provide a range of pro-
gramming which does not du-
plicate that now offered by
broadcasters and must do so
without siphoning programs
from the broadcasting system
... Second, it must ensure the
production of high-quality Ca-
nadian programs that Cana-
dians will watch. Third, it must
ensure that programs are pro-
duced in Canada for interna-
tional sale.”’

The options: ‘First, indivi-
dual licensees; second, a con-
sortium which could involve
various combinations of cable
operators, broadcasters and
representatives of government;
and third, a pay-television net-
work which could be either a
public or private corporation.”

The minister said she favors
the network approach, but
warned that pay-TV must not
fall into the trap of the motion
picture industry where foreign
interests control the financial
resources needed for Canadian
production.

Boyle added that the govern-
ment will make a_ national
policy decision on pay-TV after
receiving comments from the
public by September 1, 1976.

Already a group of cable
operators have incorporated
their ‘Pay Television Network
Ltd.” with promises of 15°: of
the revenues going into Cana-
dian production (estimated pay-
TV revenues — $120-250 mil-
lion). The broadcasters are not
well advanced in their pay-TV
thinking, but CTV has already
asked for a share of the pie.
Public enterprise is quiet
(sleeping?). The Council of Ca-
nadian Filmmakers congratulat-
ed Mme. Sauve on her speech
and announced a pay-TV semi-
nar in July to develop a policy
for the benefit of the program
production industry.

Kirwan Cox

IMPERIAL OIL, in what one
hopes will be the start of a small
trend, has moved from hockey to
culture. It will bankroll a major
seven-part TV series on immi-
gration to this country, empha-
sizing the importance of various
ethnic groups in the development
of Canada. Plans are for broad-
cast simultaneously in English
and French on the CBC in 1977,
and for a repeat of the series in
1980. The latter date marks the
100th anniversary of Imperial
Oil, and this birthday provides
the reason for the epic produc-
tion.

The title will be The New-
comers, Inhabiting a New Land.
The project will be produced for
Esso by Intervideo, the company
run by Richard Nielson and Pat
Ferns, who are responsible for
many TV films, including the

Malcolm Muggeridge series A
Third Testament. Executive
producer for Imperial Oil will
be Gordon Hinch, a former TV
production hand. Ultimately the
series will be made available
for educational distribution,
complete with study guides,
books, paperbacks, and coffee-
table books.

The approach is to combine
drama and documentary, and to
help with the history Esso has
an 1l-member advisory board.
Writers working so far under
story editor Charles Israel in-
clude Alice Munro, Al Purdy,
George Ryga, Timothy Findlay
and Guy Fournier. Eric Till
leaves for the Northwest Terri-
tories soon to film the first seg-
ment, Prologue, about the na-
tive peoples. Jean-Claude Lord
will direct the second episode.

ACTRA: For the record, here’s
a list of the winners of the AC-
TRA Awards, broadcast from
Toronto in late April: Jane Mal-
let won the John Drainie Award,
Harry Brown was named Best
Radio Public Affairs Broadcast-
er, Warner Troyer was cited as
Best Writer in a Visual Docu-
mentary, Adrienne Clarkson and
Warner Troyer shared the Gor-
don Sinclair Award for Out-
spokenness, John Howard of
Winnipeg received the award for
Best Public Affairs Broadcast-
er in TV, Pierre Juneau re-
ceived a Special Recognition
Award, Ted Allen won the Award
for Best Visual Drama Writing
for Lies My Father Told Me
(the only feature film effort to
win any award in the entire
evening), Max Ferguson and Al-
lan McFee shared the award for
Best Radio Performance, Fred
Sgambatti received the Best
Sportscaster Award, Peter Kent
of CBC won the Best News
Broadcaster Award, Elizabeth
Gray of Ottawa won the Best
Writing Award for Documentary
Radio, Harry Bruce won the
Best Radio Dramatic Writing
Award, Al Waxman was named
Best Performer in a T'V Series,
Jayne Eastwood received the
Earle Grey Award for Best Per-
formance in a Non-Feature Film
or TV Role, Chris Wiggins won
the Andrew Allen Award for
Best Radio Dramatic Perform-
ance, Pro Nobis Pectoribus was
cited Best Radio Program and
Emily Carr was named Best TV
Program of the Year. It was a
relaxed, smooth show with a re-
markable number of enjoyable
acceptance speeches.

Festivals

The big fall festival that
makes its first appearance this
year is Toronto producer Bill
Marshall’s’ Festival of Festi-
vals. To be held at Ontario
Place in Toronto from October
18 to 24, the programming will
include the best selections from
the top film festivals held each
year outside of Canada — and
there are 400 of them — as well
as a North American premiere
and world premieres from Hol-
lywood. It’s the cream of Can-
nes, Berlin, Edinborough, Los
Angeles and so on, says Mar-
shall and he hopes it will be
the start of an annual event.
Also included will be a series
of special-interest festivals,
for example an afternoon of
documentaries, as well as a
producers’ conference featuring
foreign guests but mainly for

‘Canadians. He’s been working

on it for a year and a half, and
now sees the budget at $300,000,
with nine people on staff this
summer growing to 40 or 50 at
festival time. “The Kaels,
Reeds and others will be here.
It’s a first-class world festi-
val.”” To bring off the budget,
he’s obtained funds from
government sources — about
one-third — and private sources
for the rest. Some input comes
in services: Harbour Castle
Hotel will provide office space
and house the guests. He’s
visited other festivals to recruit
experts to help set it up, and
he’s been constantly travelling
to other festivals to find films,
all of which he’ll choose him-
self.

And don’t forget the World
Animation Festival and Ottawa
76 during the first two weeks
of August, organized by the
Canadian Film Institute.

Random Notes

In the wake of increasing in-
vestment in foreign movies by
Canadians, the Secretary of
State Department and _ the
Ministry of Revenue are holding
meetings. The object is to
lower the current 60°; tax write-
off on foreign film investment
to 20°: (for Canadian films it’s
100°-). Despite the tax benefits
of investing in Canadian films
over foreign efforts, money
continues to flow to Story of O,
Conduct Unbecoming, The O-
dessa File, The Klansmen, and
now Won Ton Ton: The Dog
Who Saved Hollywood. That’s

more than has been invested. in
Canadian features in the recent
fall surge, and it leads one to
ascertain that the real reason
for investing in movies is to
make money from the film re-
venue, not to prevent the
government from _ collecting.
And that’s the psychology that
should govern attracting inves-
tors for Canadian films.

Last Tango in Paris had its
Nova Scotia premiere in late
April, somewhat belatedly due
to the banning of it by the pro-
vincial censor board. But the
board, due to a valiant battle
by journalist Gerald McNeil and

his lawyer, has been transform- .
‘ed from a cutter to a classifier,

and hence Tango’s debut. But
McNeil is still $14,000 short
of his $25,000 costs, and is
seeking financial contributions.
And he still will probably have
to fight a provincial appeal of
his court victory. Nor has he
seen the film yet; he’s now
posted in Ottawa, where it
played ages ago... On another
financial front, Crawley Films
is feeling the crunch of a cash-
flow problem, due to having two
$500,000 features in circulation.
Hence they’ve sold their Chel-
sea, Quebec, studio to the
federal government, and laid off
some staff. Also costly is Craw-
ley’s current legal battle with
Universal; it claims they ne-
glected to distribute Janis well.

Janis produced by Crawley

FILITINEWS

Canada Council senior arts
grants for filmmakers were
awarded to Gilles Carle, An-
dré Forcier, and Bill Fruet...
Gail Scott has been appointed
a field producer for CTV’s W5.
Up to now she’s been covering
Ottawa’s surreal political world
for the network... CBC Drama
head John Hirsch’s production
of The Dybbuk picked up three
Los Angeles Drama Critics’
Awards: the play was cited
as Distinguished Production,
Hirsch himself'as Distinguished
Director, and lead actor Nehe-
miah Persoff as Distinguished
Actor...

‘Cold Journey, the Martin De-
falco film made some time ago,
was premiered in La Pas, Ma-
nitoba, where some of it was
shot. The NFB feature tells
the story of an Indian boy’s
inability to adapt to his chang-
ing native world or the different
white world, and was made with
an Indian crew assisting and
being trained via the shoot.
Distribution will be in the im-
mediate Prairie areas where
those who can connect best with
the film live. The cast includes
Johnny Yesno, Buckley Peta-
wabano and Chief Dan George...
René -Bonniére’s NFB film A
Sense of Place, made to mark
the UN housing conference, Hab-
itat, held in June in Vancouver,
was shown on CBC on June 9...

Stephen Chesley

- June-July 1976/7

FILIYI NEWS

ONTARIO

TVO -— As the other TV seasons
expire into reruns, TVO, the On-
tario educational network, con-
tinues to present new efforts.
Among the April showings were
Don Shebib’s study of the life
of old people; We’ve Come a
Long Way Together; Buenos
Dias Companeras, about the
life of present-day Cuban women
produced by Vivienne Leebosh
and featuring translations and
interviews by Selman Bryant-
Fournier; and a theme evening
on native peoples, beginning with
a Buffy Sainte-Marie concert
featuring Harry Belafonte as
narrator, an examination of the
exploitation of Indian lands writ-
ten and directed by Ron Kelly
and called I Can Get It for You
Wholesale, and concluding with
To Walk With Dignity, a com-
ment from the Indian point of
view by Duke Redbird.

On May 12, the York Uni-
versity Department of Film held
its annual showing of student
films. This year the event took
place at the Art Gallery of On-
tario, and for the first time
third-year efforts were added to
the fourth-year-level films...
York’s head of film, John Katz,
is off to California for a sabbati-
cal next year. Acting head will be
Stan Fox... Bruce Raymond has
had no better economic luck with
Toronto’s Studio Centre pro-
duction studio than his prede-
cessors, and has refused his
option to buy and moved his of-
fices out. The owners, Cam-
brian Broadcasting, are running
it for now.

VISION IV of Toronto have gone
their separate ways officially.
Dick Shouten is now with Video
Program Services; Bob Clarke,
Victor Solniki, and Barry Ley-
land are off on their own; and the
fifth member, Harve Sherman,
has several projects in the
works, one of them possibly with
Universal Studios. Last fall,
Sherman on his own produced
Shoot, and it’s set to open in
June, with Ambassador handling
domestic distribution and Avco
Embassy having the American
rights. European rights have
also been sold.

THE DAN GIBSON-KEG Pyro-
duction of Grey Owl is still in
the planning stages, but the film
becomes firmer all the time...
Larry Dane, producer, and Peter
Carter, director, have revived

8/ Cinema Canada

Peter Carter

Rituals for shooting this sum-
mer. Pic was originally schedul-
ed for last summer and con-
cerns hunters in our primitive
north woods.

CCCP — Toronto filmmakers
Dennis Pike and Ivan Goricanec
of Certified Canadian Content
Productions have completed five
three-minute films based on In-
dian legends for Avatar Learn-
ing, the production arm of En-
cyclopaedia Britannica Films.

AT THE CBC, Peter Pearson
has signed a three-film contract,
two of which will be in the return-
ed, highly successful journalism
series under producers Ralph
Thomas and Stephen Patrick. Al-
ready complete for the series is
Ada, a film by Claude Jutra
about women in a mental hos-
pital, with a cast that includes
Kate Reid, Jayne Eastwood, Ja-
net Amos, Anne Anglin, and Sa-
bena Maydell. During late April
Don Haldane directed a Rudy
Wiebe script filmed in Winnipeg
and based on the Garrison Dam
project. Show is called Someday
Soon Before Tomorrow. Also
in planning stages are stories
about the recent B.C. peniten-
tiary riot and killing, Newfound-
land miners dying of radiation,
an aging hockey player, and one
based on recent Montreal crimi-
nal investigations.

CBC is repeating two of its
top documentary series this
summer: The Days Before Yes-
terday and The Tenth Decade.
As well, the best of the Per-
formance series will be shown
on Thursdays at eight pm... De-
nis Héroux’ Born for Hell and
the Harold Greenberg invest-
ment Echoes of a Summer both
played Toronto at the end of

April. Stephen Chesley

QUEBEC

OLYMPIC FILM: The NFB.
producer of the official Olympic
film for the Olympic organizing
committee. will pay a quarter
of the total budget of $1,200,000.
Of this sum, $300.000 is ear-
marked for distribution costs.
Jean-Claude Labrecque, direc-
tor, is seconded by three NFB
directors: Marcel Carriere.
Georges Dufaux and Jean Beau-
din. Jacques Bobet is producing
this extravaganza which uses
25 crews at 22 sites (120 people
in all) to film the 21 disciplines
present at the Games. Filming
started two weeks before the
Games opened. A rough cut
should be ready around Nov. 30.
and a final mix by April 30.
1977. Labrecque is abandoning
the 35 mm used at Mexico and
Munich to return to 16 mm. It
was thought that 16 mm could
better catch the fluid nature
of the activities, and was more
in keeping with the cinéma
verité technique for which Can-
ada is renowned.

COJO-CULTURE. The official
Olympic cultural film has been
contracted to Les Productions
du Verseau, and is being direct-
ed by Aimée Danis and Michel
Beaudry. During the entire
month of July, Montreal is cele-
brating, and cultural activities
abound. Sherbrooke St., from
‘Atwater to Papineau, has been
declared the ‘“‘Corridart”” where
open-air theatres, clowns, mu-
sic and dance are continuous.
The film should document these
activities as well as those at the
Olympic Village (Oscar Peter-
son, Charlebois) and the more
classical offerings in theatres
all over the city.

The film is entitled Ladies
and Gentleman, Summer! and is
structured around Reynald Bou-
chard, actor, and Annette Av
Paul, ballerina, who will tie the
diverse episodes together. Brian
MacDonald is responsible for
the choreography and Jean Sau-
vageau for the music. Daniel
Fournier is the director of pho-
tography and Francine Gagné
the assistant director. In all,
the film should cost $200,000,
the entire amount coming from
the Olympic Organizing Com-
mittee.

APFQ-SNC: Negotiations be-
gan seriously on June 30 be-
tween the Quebec producers’
association and the technicians’

union. Production had come to a
virtual standstill in early June
and several companies. were
losing customers or moving
their productions elsewhere. A
deadlock had been created when
the technicians insisted that the
producers recognize the 1974
collective agreement (imposed
unilaterally by the SNC) as the
basis for negotiation. The
APFQ had refused, insisting the
agreement must be freely ne-
gotiated. The deadlock was
broken when lawyers for the two
sides were able to come to
terms. Presently production is
back to normal. If and when a
collective agreement is conclud-
ed, it will be the first time such
an agreement has been negotiat-
ed in Quebec.

APCQ. The Association des
propriétaires de cinémas du Qué-
bec (Quebec theatre owners as-
sociation) had its annual meeting
on June 9 in Quebec City. At that
time, two motions were pres-
sented: one concerning pay-TV,
and one about parallel movie
circuits (films shown in col-
leges and universities, church
basements, lodge halls, etc.).
The theatre owners fear that

competition from the pay-TV

networks may seriously dimin-
ish attendance in the theatres,
and hope that all legislation
brought down will be written
with an eye to creating harmo-
nious' relationships between
themselves and the networks.
They also request the following:
that exhibition permits be grant-
ed on a regional and even local
basis; that theatre owners be
able to own or to participate in
pay-TV networks; and, finally,
that the APCQ be consulted be-
fore any such legislation is vot-
ed.

As for the parallel circuits,
the APCQ is concerned about
their commercial exploitation —
concerned because of the possi-
bility of profiteering and because
of the consequent lowering of
the standards of the films being
shown. It moved that the gov-
ernment legislate to insure that
all parallel circuits will be free
to the public, and that some
control be exercised to guaran-
tee the cultural and/or educa-
tional quality of the films being
shown.

The election of officers for
the year 1976-77 followed.

Claude Tremblay (Mont Lau-
rier) was elected president,
ending a four-term stint by Paul
Gendron (Victoriaville). Vice-
presidents are Pierre René
(Cinémas Unis) and Jacques Pa-
try (International Cinemas). The
new treasurer is Marcel Venne
from Joliette. Sixteen other di-
rectors were elected and will be
responsible for ongoing business
with Tom Cleary, executive se-
cretary.

ROBIN SPRY wrapped up the
shoot of his next feature, One
Man, on July 2. This National
Film Board production, filmed
in 16 mm, took seven weeks to
shoot and is scheduled to run
about 2 hours. The story tells
of a TV journalist doing a pol-
lution story who uncovers evi-
dence of a chemical plant emit-
ting poisonous gases, and re-
ports on it. The subsequent
publicity puts his life in danger.
The crew includes Roger Frap-
pier, assistant director; Doug
Kieffer, DOP; John Kramer,
editor; Claude MHazanavicius,
sound; and actors Len Cariou
(playing Jason Brady), Jayne
Eastwood (his wife), Carol La-
zare, Barry Morse, Jacques Go-
din, Jean Lapointe, Marc Le-
gault and others. Michael Scott
is the producer.

Robin Spry, shooting in Mont

HARRY GULKIN PRODUC-
TIONS started shooting Jacob
Two-Two Meets the Hooded
Fang on July 5 in Montreal.
Taken from a children’s story
by Mordecai Richler, Gulkin
hopes to make a film which will
appeal equally to children and
adults. The film stars Alex
Karras (well known as the man
who hit the horse in the face in
Blazing Saddles) as Hooded
Fang and Stephen Rosenberg as
Jacob Two-Two. The budget is
over a million dollars and was
funded by a group of Canadian
investors, a group of American
investors, and by Famous Play-
ers. The project was turned
down by the CFDC.

Connie Tadros

FILIYINEWS

THE PRAIRIES

WINNIPEG. Filmmakers are
co-operating in the Prairie Prov-
inces. Winnipeg film producer
Norm Bortnick is in Saskatche-
wan for summer filming of a
series by the new Sask-Media
organization. Former Winnipeg
producer Rudy Gijzen heads the
Saskatchewan government pro-i
duction house.

It’s hands across the border
with the CBC as well. Producer
Randy Roberts of CBC Regina
and Winnipeg filmmaker Ron S.
Williams are planning a Regina-
made film drama, a new adven-
ture for the small and relatively
new CBC outpost. Regina crew
members worked on The Lar-
sens, a one-hour CBC Winnipeg
film comedy. Toronto’s Jane
Mallett and 83-year-old veteran
actor George Waight of Winni-
peg starred in the film. When
the old-age pension check isn’t
enough to live on, the couple
subsidizes their income with
shoplifting and other “‘activities”’
that they could tell their grand-
children about.

Dave Dueck Productions recent-
ly released a dramatized docu-
mentary Memo’s Reins. The 1!2-
hour film travels through time
telling the history of the Men-
nonites, whose numbers are
great in Manitoba. The filming
took place in Alberta near Banff,
Steinback in southern Manitoba
and in Winnipeg.

CBC Winnipeg is filming three
more dramas in 1976. Don S.
Williams, producer-director of
the Larsens, begins in late Au-
gust an ambitious project sim-
ply called Moses. The unique
Carberry Desert, a freak of
nature in the middle of the Prai-
ries, will become the set for
the Biblical story told in music
and dance by the Sara-Somer
Chai Folk Ensemble, a Winnipeg
Jewish folk group.

Williams will also direct Mel-
dia and the Ducks for producer
Dereck Goodwin, new to western
Canada from the BBC, as well
as for Beachcombers in British
Columbia. And if your script is
ready, yet another drama will
be filmed in Winnipeg next win-
ter. Don S. Williams, c/o CBC
Winnipeg would be the place to
send it, as no decision has been
reached yet on the script.

Tom Fletcher’s F.S.I. produc-
tions has been screeening Moo-
dy Manitoba around the prov-
ince. The show promotes Mani-
toba’s ‘‘outback’’. Toronto cam-

eraman Richard Stringer did the
very picturesque photography.

Another Toronto cameraman,
Vic Sarrin, is in Winnipeg to
film a CBC Toronto drama, as
well as a documentary on the
history of the CCF (forerunner
of the NDP). Sarrin and com-
pany will be utilizing the new
color negative processer at Ken
Davey Productions. Lab owner
Gunter Henning and CBC Win-
nipeg Film Director Paul Mar-
tel gave the new equipment a
good test. Some 16,000 feet of
7247 exposed by cameraman Don
Hunter launched the new service.
Rushes are now available to
crews filming dramas in Mani-
toba.

Music composer Dave Jan-
drich along with Graham Doyle
and Connie Bortnick will produce
this year’s film items for Se-
same Street. Fifth-season cam-
eraman Don Hunter will not com-
plete the project this summer as

The Contest

How to Enter

The Results

may have guessed.

Cinema Canada

Montreal, Quebec
H2V 4N3

Wri
WHO

This issue’s cover is just a smattering of the faces
and bodies to be seen at Cannes. Cinema Canada
offers a free subscription to those who can identify
the most photos. If you’re already subscribed, we'll
send the sub on as a gift to a friend.

Just number a piece of paper from one to thirty, and
start in the upper left-hand corner; work down and
across the page. Send your answers and guesses to
the address below before the 15th of Sept.

The results will be announced in the October issue of
Cinema Canada. Good luck. And don’t worry — a few
of the photos are of anonymous people, as well you

Box 398, Outremont Station

he will be working for UNICEF
under the direction of Toronto
producer Denis Hargrave.

The pair are off to Sri Lanka
and South Korea to film two
half-hour children’s programs,
a CBC-UNICEF co-production
entitled Children of the World.
The project is now in its twelfth
year. Cameraman Warren Wel-
don and Ben Matilainen will con-
tinue the Winnipeg Sesame
Street filming with researcher
Susan Chipman, a three-year
veteran on the show.

Myron Kupchuck, CSC, Cliff
Liebricht, Don Hunter and Gil
Cormier will represent Mani-
toba at the Olympics among the
more than 50 film crews.

Vic Wintoniak of CBC Edmon-
ton will also make the trip. The
recent opening of a CBC-TV sta-
tion in Calgary sent former Win-
nipeg camera assistant Jim Wo-

robec to Calgary. Don Travis

June-July 1976/9

FILMY] NEWS

Alice in Never=-Never Land

by Stephen Chesley

To the rest of the country, it may seem that Ottawa is
some sort of Alice in Never-Never Land, a bureaucratic
garrison on the Rideau that ventures out to view the rest
of Canada intermittently, and consequently knows little
about the real world. But Ottawa does have one advantage
over the rest of us: while gossip and rumor are part of
our lives, Gossip and Rumor are the capital’s main life
force. Speculation is the lifeblood of the bureaucracy, and
as it heats up so do the pulses of the various depart-
ments involved. In short, it’s fun, because Gossip is
respectable. It even gets things done by acting as trial
balloons.

April was film’s turn. A story was leaked to the media
that revealed Secretary of State Hugh Faulkner’s plans
for our beloved industry. Actually the story described
Faulkner’s timetable to come up with a policy. And so
dinner conversation turned to ‘What does all this mean
if it’s true?’

According to ‘insiders’, the Robert Tompkins man-

agement study on the film industry, ordered by Faulk-
ner some time ago and scheduled to be finished in late
March, proposes the creation of a supergroup to oversee
the film industry, reliance on the private sector rather
than expanding government programs, retaining the
CFDC investment, and the appointment of a head for this
superagency. A Film Czar. Government Film Advisor
Sydney Newman, currently examining the film industry
for Faulkner, and current Government Film Com-
missioner André Lamy both jumped in with memos
favoring the agency, and, of course, implying that each
of them was the obvious choice for czar. Great stuff.
And everybody started speculating about Faulkner’s re-
sponse, the future of the industry, etc.

Two things are clear: the believability of such a pro-
gram, and the fact that Faulkner has to come up with
something fast. Also obvious is the trepidation with
which such an idea should be viewed.

For several years Faulkner has been harassed by the
industry without let-up. Because his film advisors, such
as Des Loftus, while nice men, took too long to try and
understand industry thoughts, and had titles that were
too small to act as officials with power, Faulkner him-
self is still the centrepiece. With a film czar he gets
the flak deflected; choosing a smooth politician such as
Newman, who is not even afraid to go outside and meet
the constituents, would be terrific. Choosing someone
like Lamy, recently from private industry, would main-
tain the Liberal position of not too much government in-
volvement in anything on the surface. Yes, that’s terrific
too.

But most of all, Faulkner needs a policy fast. The
CFDC money will last only until next spring, and that’s
because when film SOS people went before the Treasury
Board last fall for CFDC financing, Board head Jean

10/ Cinema Canada

Chretien asked an embarrassing question: Where’s the
Film Policy? And when he saw none, he gave the CFDC
only enough to last until March ’77. Any policy will
pretty well do; Faulkner presented the publishing indus-
try with an ineffectual policy, but it was an official pol-
icy, and it showed where he stood and dampened the din
of clamoring. It doesn’t ever stop the yelling, but govern-
ments survive by throwing crumbs and then saying
they’ve done their part.

What about the idea itself? Pity the poor filmmaker.
Filmmakers in this country, and I include producers in
the designation, spend much energy getting the film
together, and the process is one of continual rejection
until you hit the right moment, personality, and situation.
Now you can go to the Canada Council, the CFDC, the
NFB, the private sector, provincial arts councils, and
maybe even TV if your idea is suitable. With enough
targets you’ve got a chance to score on one, so that
some adjudicator’s personal taste or a producer’s head-
ache or your nonexistent track record won’t wipe you out.
Consolidating all or most of the government sources —
even if, as is part of the speculation, you divide the in-
dustry agency into sections — means placing a greater
chance of failure on the person trying to put the film to-
gether. There should be more sources, and none of them
should be run by civil servants — especially since they’re
impossible to teach unless they come from the outside
world, and too often they’re just in their positions: as a
result of a shift around Bureaucratland.

Sydney Newman immediately denied all he had said
without denying anything in a great letter to the news-
paper. Speculation says that the Tompkins report will be
made public by the time you read this, a strange move
because ministers don’t have to make commissioned
reports public, and certainly Hugh Faulkner hasn’t let
his mind be known about anything in the past. And Faulk-
ner supposedly wants industry dicsussion through the
summer and a law drafted in the fall to the put through
Parliament by the winter.

The whole concept of an industry czar is not new; it
was thrown around during Gérard Pelletier’s regime as
Secretary of State. And if you think of the kind of man
needed, he would have to know the industry well; portray
the nationalist sympathizer without really altering the
whole game in any significant way; be able to take flak
from friend and foe alike; articulate something coherent;
be outside the top echelon of the industry directly (New-
man and Lamy aren’t in strong positions because usually
czars aren’t chosen from competitors in the nobility);
be a true blue Liberal but without too much partisan
temperament in the job; look like he’ll stay for a while
because it’s where he would want to be; be available at
exactly the right time.

Like Pierre Juneau, maybe? Oo

ORGANIZATIONS

CSC

Canadian Society of
Cinematographers

22 Front St. West
Toronto, Ontario

The Annual General Meeting of the
Canadian Society of Cinematographers
was held on May 8, 1976 at Astral
Bellevue-Pathé Ltd. in Toronto. A
new board of directors was elected
and is as follows:

Harry Makin c.s.c. - President

Norman C. Allin c.s.c. - Vice-Pres-
ident

Terrance Culbert c.s.c. - Secretary

Roy Tash c.s.c. - Treasurer

Bob Bocking c.s.c. - Membership
and Nominations

James Kelly c.s.c. - Education and
Training

Robert
Relations.

Rouveroy c.s.c. - Public

CCFM =

Council
of Canadian Filmmakers

Box 1003, Station A,
Toronto, Ontario, M5W 1G5
(416) 869-0716

The Annual General Meeting was
held in Toronto on May 6. The meet-
ing got off with a bang as Astral
Films delivered a notice that they
were suing the CCFM for libel and
slander over a statement in The
CCFM Newsletter which questioned
distribution practices for Canadian
films.

Chairperson Sandra _ Gathercole
reported on the previous year’s acti-
vities which included opposition to
the Secretary of State’s voluntary
agreement with Famous Players and
Odeon announced August 5, 1975; a
number of briefs to Ontario and meet-
ings with the Minister of Culture and

Recreation Robert Welch (without
visible result); an appearance before
the CRTC on behalf of the public
enterprise alternative for pay-TV;
support for the request to initiate a
combine investigation on Feb. 4, 1976;
a brief and appearance before the
Bryce Commission on _ Corporate
Concentration on April 27, 1976; ini-
tiatives to develop film policies for
political parties in opposition at the
federal and provincial level; support
for the Rocca Case in Halifax; and
a number of other initiatives.

The CCFM effort might be summed
up by the fact that Pierre Juneau
told the directors of the Canadian
Forum that CCFM is the best lobby
in Ottawa while Hugh Faulkner has
told many people that CCFM is the
worst.

Election of individual representa-
tives — Sandra Gathercole; Kirwan
Cox; Allan King; Gordon Pinsent; Pen
Densham; Natalie Edwards; Grant
McLean; and Henry Comor (resigned).

The CCFM executive gave Ms.
Gathercole the ‘Persistence of Vi-
sion” Award.

Robin Chetwyn attended the meeting
on behalf of the Canadian Film and
Television Association. He said that
group would like to be closer to the
CCFM. Don Hopkins and Beryl Fox
discussed the NFB-Toronto produc-
tion unit.

Executive representatives included
Fiona Jackson (BCFIA); Margaret Col-
lier (ACTRA): Don Wilder (Directors
Guild); Monty Montgomery (IATSE);
Bill Boyle (Toronto Filmmakers Coop);

Robert Rouveroy (CSC); Patrick Spence-

Thomas (NABET 700); John Watson
(Editors Guild). Also attending were
over 200 of the faithful.

The CCFM intends to put out a
special pay-TV edition of the newslet-
ter (finances permitting) for a special
pay-TV seminar to be held at the end
of July. The CCFM will invite all pay-
TV license applicants to explain their
position as well as government re-
presentatives, broadcasters, and
groups with pay-TV experience. We
then will put together a pay-TV posi-
tion paper representing the pay-TV
option which we think best suits the
interests of the program production
industry and the public. Such posi-
tion papers must be presented to the
CRTC by September 1, 1976.

We welcome any or ali information,
opinion, or analysis of pay-TV for

our newsletter, seminar, and official
policy. The sooner the better. Details
on the seminar to be announced soon.

The Society of Film Makers

7451 Trans Canada Highway
Ville St. Laurent, Québec
(514) 333-0722.

The Society of Film Makers has
requested the Canadian Film Develop-
ment Corporation to convene all mem-
bers of the Advisory Group to discuss
what it feels to be irregularities in
the operation of the Working Com-
mittee.

The SFM understands that this Work-
ing Committee appointed by the Adviso-
ry Group on the recommendation of
the CFDC is directly responsible to
the Advisory Group.

Membership in the Advisory Group
proliferated as a direct result of the
activities of the CFDC. The CFDC
then felt it had created an unwieldy
number of participants and sought to
gain a reduction by requesting the
formation of a Working Committee.
The SFM knows that the critical state
of the Canadian film industry requires
the greatest co-operation and cross-
fertilization of progressive ideas
from the entire industry as represent-
ed in the Advisory Group and that
the CFDC, having created it, should
honor it.

The Society of Film Makers, long-
time supporters of the Canadian Con-
ference of the Arts, attended the recent
Conference in Toronto and were happy
to applaud the growth and direction
of this umbrella organization over
the past 10 years of association. Wal-
ly Gentleman, SFM director, manda-
torily retired from this body after
serving three consecutive terms as
governor, having had four years of
SFM representation prior to this.

The SFM is meeting on a fort-
nightly basis to review their principal
recommendations of the past, now

paralleled by the CCFM.

June-July 1976/11

by Rodger J. Ross

TECH NEWS

COLOR TEMPERATURE

AND ITS MEASUREMENT

When a tungsten filament lamp is
turned on, it gives off light that ap-
pears to the eye to be white. But if
the light is passed through a prism
and spread out into the spectrum, it
will be seen that the light is actually
made up of a mixture of many different
colors, from blue at one end of the
display to red at the other. A sensitive
instrument can be used to measure the
energy in the different parts of the
spectrum. Plotting these measurements
on graph paper produces a continuous
curve, rising steeply from blue to red.
This indicates that the light from a
tungsten lamp has much more energy
in the red region than at the blue end.

The term ‘color temperature” is
related to the actual temperature of
a material when it is heated to the
point where it. gives off light. The
standard reference material is known
as a “black body” and the color
temperature scale starts at absolute
zero Celsius — 273 deg. below freezing.
For practical purposes in the exposure
of color film the color temperature in
degrees Kelvin can be said to be ap-
proximately the same as the actual
temperature of the incandescent fila-
ment in a lamp. As the current in the
lamp is increased, by raising the
voltage from, say, 100 to 130 volts,
the filament becomes hotter, and this
raises the amount of blue energy in
the light, relative to red.

Daylight is made up also of a continu-
ous band of colors, but a curve drawn
on graph paper representing the ener-
gy in the light shows the blue end to
be tilted up considerably, indicating
that the amount of blue in daylight
is much greater than in tungsten light.
To the eye, both daylight and tungsten
light usually appear to be white, due
to the peculiar characteristic of the
eye known as visual adaptation. It is

Long time Supervisor of Technical Film
Operations at the programming centre of
the CBC,. Mr. Ross is the author of two
books, Television Film Engineering and
Color Film for Color Television and has
just won the Agfa-Gevaert Gold Medal,
awarded by the Society of Motion Picture
and Television Engineers.

12/ Cinema Canada

only when these two sources of light
are compared side by side that tungs-
ten light can be seen as strongly
orange-yellow in color, while daylight
has a decidedly blue cast.

Color film is made with three sepa-
rate light-sensitive layers. One layer
is sensitive to blue, another to green
(in the central part of the spectrum)
and the third to red. During manu-
facture, films for use in cameras are
“balanced” by adjusting the sensiti-
vities of the three layers in relation
to the amounts of red, green and blue
light in either tungsten light or average
daylight. If a film balanced for tung-
sten light is exposed with daylight,
the pictures will have a strong blue

cast — this can be avoided by placing»

a filter over the camera lens that
absorbs the excessive amount of blue
in daylight. Similarly, a daylight-
balanced film can be exposed indoors
with tungsten light when a filter is
used that absorbs a sufficient amount
of red light to match the film’s sensi-
tivity.

In practice, the amount of energy
in light from tungsten lamps varies
to an appreciable extent due to voltage
variations and other factors. The ear-
liest method for detecting these varia-
tions was to measure the ratio of blue
to red. With this method the lamp
voltage could be adjusted to maintain
a particular predetermined ratio,
known to give acceptable color pic-
tures, or correction filters could be
placed over the camera lens to com-
pensate for color temperature varia-
tions.

This method worked so long as the
light sources being measured had
spectral energy distributions similar
to tungsten lamps. Many light sources
used in the exposure of color films do
not have the near-ideal light-emitting
characteristics of tungsten lamps, how-
ever. The spectral energy distribution
of daylight does not conform with the
tungsten light pattern, and its color
varies considerably at different times
of the day, and from one day to the
next. Average daylight, which is a
mixture of sunlight and skylight, gives
a blue-red ratio quite different than
that which would be expected from

an ideal radiator emitting light at the
same color temperature.

Color Temperature Meters

In the early 1950s there was a
great surge of interest in the measure-
ment of color temperature and in the
interpretation of these measurements,
since at that time color motion pic-
ture films were coming into more
extensive use. In a paper published
in the April 1950 issue of SMPTE
Journal O. E. Miller of the Eastman
Kodak Co. said that a meter was
needed that could measure the amounts
of red, green and blue energy in light
sources, corresponding to the color
sensitivity peaks in the three layers
of the color film.

Karl Freund, well-known Hollywood
personality and director of photogra-
phy for several years on The Lucy
Show, proposed a method of measur-
ing the blue-red and green-red ratios
in light sources. This principle was
incorporated in the Spectra color tem-
perature meter, put on the market
in 1951 by Photo Research Corp. The
meter was supplied with a circular
calculator with which readings could
be converted into required filter num-
bers.

FILM ~ BALANCED. CQLOR TEMPERATURE
RELRNS > IEEE

The problems of matching light
sources with the sensitivities of color
film layers have become more acute
with the more extensive use of light
sources such as metal arcs and fluo-
rescent lamps. These sources have
spectral energy distributions that are
not uniform across the spectrum. The
peaks and dips in the energy curves
may in some cases coincide with the
peaks of film sensitivity, and in other
cases fall between them. Either way,
the resulting color pictures may turn
out to be severely unbalanced in one
direction or another.

In 1970 the Motion Picture and Tele-
vision Research Centre in Hollywood
collaborated with Photo Research Corp.
to produce a new meter that would
give more accurate indications of light
source variations. This instrument,
the Spectra film-balanced three-color
meter, was designed so that its spec-
tral sensitivity matched the sensitivity
of commonly used camera films. A
paper describing the meter and its
development appeared in the Feb. 1971
issue of SMPTE Journal.

At the Society’s 117th technical
conference in Los Angeles, in October
1975, Richard Walker and james
Branch described ‘‘a new direct-read-
ing three-color meter” that had been
developed by the Photo Research Div.
of Kollmorgen Corp. In this paper,
which was published in the Feb. 1976
issue of the Journal, the authors point
out that the former film-balanced me-
ter had some practical disadvantages;
mainly because the user had to carry
out several operations while holding
the meter in a fixed position. The new
meter includes two separate meter
mechanisms for the readout, greatly
simplifying the making of measure-
ments. One meter gives a reading of
the blue-red ratio, while the other
shows the green-red balance of the
light source. A separate photo-detect-
or and filter combination is used for
each of the three colors — red, green
and blue — and the color temperature
is computed electronically from the
measured ratios. The ratios are
determined simultaneously in a direct-
reading mode, independent of light
levels.

The color filters used in the meter
were selected to match as closely as
possible the photographic aim system.
The system chosen as the aim was
Eastman Ektachrome film, exposed
through typical coated multi-element
lenses. The spectral sensitivity of
this combination is said to be similar
to that of most other camera color
films. Since the meter has almost

the same response in any part of the
color spectrum as the film will have,
it will give reliable indications of the
film’s response to a particular source
of light, the authors of this paper
claim.

Calculators are provided with the
meter to convert meter readings into
the color correction filters needed to
balance the light source color to the
color film. These can be light balanc-
ing (color temperature shifting) filters,

TECH NEWS

or cyan, magenta and yellow color
compensating filters. From the calcula-
tor scales the filter needed to obtain
the best possible match can be select-
ed and placed over the camera lens.

While these papers deal mainly with
the development of the meters, there
is a great deal of valuable informa-
tion in them for the practicing cinema-
tographer, confronted every day with
a bewildering variety of light sources
and exposure conditions.

EQUIPMENT NEWS

Note to Canadian distributors: We would
like to include the names and addresses of
Canadian distributors of equipment and
services mentioned in this section. Please
ask your suppliers to give Canadian sources
in their publicity releases. Ed.

MultiTrack Magnetics
Holoscope Projectors

MultiTrack Magnetics Inc., suppliers
through Braun Electric Canada Ltd.
of equipment for post-production and
reproduction to Canada’s film indus-
try, has developed and produced ‘“‘the
newest tool in concept and operation”
— the Holoscope Projector.

Everyone involved in post-produc-
tion work has the problem of preserv-
ing the originals and still being able
to view them with a projector, often
with temporary splices. MTM’s PH-
16 High-Speed MHoloscope Projector
has effectively eliminated these prob-
lems, using a 24-sided prism and
continuous film motion to give a
totally flickerless picture. The film
motion mechanism is the basic “‘build-
ing block”? concept developed by Multi-
Track Magnetics and provides steady,
silent projection even up to 12 times
normal speed, either forward or re-
verse. Frame lines are completely
eliminated and the projected pictures
remain in focus and frame synchro-
nization during all modes of opera-
[5 pe

This unit is well-suited for telecine
use. The projector can be fed into
a telecine simultaneously with screen
projection. The standard 400-W. tung-
sten-halogen lamp gives a_ picture
size of about 40 inches, and the op-
tional 500-W. xenon lamp a picture
size of 59 inches. Prices and cata-
logues available from Braun Electric
Canada Ltd., 3269 American Drive,
Mississauga, Ont. L4V 1B9.

PH-16 Holoscope Projector

June-July 1976/13

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See it at A. L. Clark.

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30 Dorchester Ave.

14/ Cinema Canada

ROUGH CUT

by Robert Rouveroy C.S.C.

To all of us in the film world, elec-
tronic news gathering or ENG re-
presents a threat to our livelihood.
Of course the old adage still holds
value:If you can’t lick them, join them
— and to tell you the truth, I’ve joined
them sometimes. After all, bread,
death and taxes is what it is all about
in the end and I’d rather die rich, if
at all possible.

ENG represents the first step in
the steady devaluation of chemical
image gathering, and this is the film
industry’s fault. Just imagine! In a
hundred odd years, nothing has really
changed in the field of recording
material. It still takes a considerable
time after shooting before the image
can be viewed. It has to undergo
repeated dunkings in all kinds of
highly corrosive liquids, has to be
handled in total darkness, and no
correction is possible on the original
material. Even the origin of color
perception on film is buried in the
depths of photographic history. Our
cameras, however sophisticated, have
the complexity of a safety pin com-
pared to the intricacies of a $10.95
hand calculator.

Opening Credits

So, on a recent assignment to the
American Southwest, I had the fortune
to sit beside an engineer of the Texas
Eastman Corporation. Delta was fly-
ing us to Houston or somewhere — I
can’t remember anymore. Such trips
are a blur, what with the extreme
hospitality encountered on such flights.

Texas Eastman is part of the East-
man Kodak family and is mostly into
chemicals. I suffered through a long
description cf manufacturing proces-
ses when I picked up a faint whiff of
something new. It had to do with ion-
exchange chemistry and I remember-
ed something about Polaroid chemis-
try so I started pumping him. Well,
to tell you the truth, I couldn’t fol-
low much of what he told me, but the
essence is that Kodak will probably
unveil a new self-developing color
film at this year’s Photokina. Sure
enough, when I came back to Toronto
I asked some people I know who work

Toronto’s “gimmick man”, Robert Rouve-
roy C. S.C. is president of Robert Rouve-
roy Films Ltd. and shares ownership in Ci-
nimage.

for Kodak Rochester and got the run-
around. At first I took the denials
seriously, but then their denials be-
came so emphatic I started to think
otherwise. We live in a_post-Water-
gate atmosphere where the rule of
thumb is that any loud negation is a
sign of the affirmative. Frankly, the
development of instant film is rea-
sonable to expect, because the ENG
movement in the US must hurt the
16 mm film market considerably.

Now we have to remember that most
improvements are first sighted in
the amateur market which is much
larger than the professional market.
But in this case there is no rush to
'4-inch videotape for home entertain-
ment. The best entry into that market
seems to be the AKAI and you’d
still shell out close to 8,000 bucks
for that one. No, what is needed is
an image storing device that is rela-
tively cheap compared to the ENG
camera (like any 16 mm camera), the
ability to retrieve the image almost
immediately (like — self-developing
film) and a broadcast link back to the
studio as is used now in ENG.

The drawbacks of ENG are well
known. The cameras are incredibly
complicated and do not have the por-
tability and exposure range of color
film. Editing is still a headache but

the most difficult part is the storage
and retrieval problem. It does not
wash that you can erase and re-
use the tape. The whole point of news
gathering is that the event occurs only
once and that therefore the image
must be preserved for later use.

To illustrate this: a few months ago

I was at the film library of CTV on

45 Charles Street and the head libra-
rian told me with pride they’d just
sold $7,000 worth of stock shots out
of the Canada — Five Portraits series
I'd shot several years ago. By the
way, he had another problem. He
was looking for a_ storage-retrieval
system for 2-inch videotape. It seems
that all TV networks are interested
in this problem. Videotape has to
be stored at certain temperature/
humidity levels, away from strong
magnetic fields etc. CBS alone has
to shell out close to $14,000 a month
for storage facilities. The problem
is that tape and film are not truly
compatible. The only way at the pre-
sent is to transfer the tapes to 16 mm
film. The best system available costs

about $60 a minute and retrieval is
not good enough for standard broad-
cast quality.

One : olution could be to think of
very fine grain black and white Super
8 film as a storage medium for di-
gitally processed electronic pulses
derived from the videotape. Not pic-
tures, just signals, recorded on trans-
verse or helical scan. Such film would
be of archival quality and no signal
deterioration would be encountered
upon retrieval. Of course, developing
such technology would cost a few
million dollars but it is well within
the capability of present-day tech-
nology.

It sure would save an enormous
amount of storage facilities and would
make retrieval infinitely easier and
cheaper. But as I said before, this is
just one of the possibilities that pro-
bably never will be explored because
electronic engineers have a natural
aversion to film. Just reflect on the
position that film cameramen have n
this video world. No self-respecting
tape-recording crew will uncap their
Plumbicons on a remote without hav-
ing every nook and cranny lighted
properly, without plerty of set-up
time, without warmed-up cameras,
without superb back-ups of gaffers,
gophers, assistants and cable pullers,
in short, without having the assurance
that the recorded image is up to the
highest standards.

Film cameramen are expected to
produce the same high standards with
the minimum crew that the station
can get away with and usually under
circumstances that defy the imagina-
tion. But still, stations are enthu-
siastically throwing out their film
crews and converting to ENG, because
they expect great economic savings
from the system. And it is true, the
savings in film stock and processing
are enormous. The capital expenditure
can be written off in a few year if,
and that is IF, the gear will stand up
to the rigors of news gathering (which
it does not) and if they re-use the tape
many times (which they do not). The
time factor is not even that impor-
tant. Very few news events happen
at the news deadline. Someone has
computed (based on two years’ ex-
perience) that maybe 2% of the news
events are of sufficient urgency to
demand immediate air time. The ul-
timate decline of the news film ca-

June-July 1976/15

ROUGH CUT

meraman is indeed directly attri-
butable to the time-lag between re-
cording the event and the hands-on
availability to the news editor. And
here is where the film manufacturers
have failed the industry miserably,
to their own detriment.

Main Track

So, with Kodak denying vehemently
any interest in self-processing film,
I turned to some friends who work
for G.A.F. and Polaroid. First, natu-
rally, no dice. Nothing was further
from their collective mind. But I
found some pretty interesting patent
applications and sure enough, a pat-
tern appeared that strongly suggests
that within a very short time, most
probably at the Photokina this Septem-
ber, several developments in self-
processing film will be exhibited.

Two of the systems will be com-
patible. That is, no changes are anti-
cipated in the film camera. The film
is exposed normally and _ processing
is accomplished in a very simple
processing chamber in the filmtruck.
One entails the peeling off of a nega-
tive layer, the other is developed by
introducing a gas to the emulsion
during a high-speed rewind.

The third system is based on a
moderate modification of the film
camera. The film, after exposure,
passes a small, very intense ultra-
violet light and is heated up consider-
ably. Development occurs and the film
passes immediately through a cooling
chamber where development is ar-
rested and fixed.

Some of you may recognize the
principle of the last system. It is
very reminiscent of the MetroKalvar
system of about 15 years ago. We
used it for making slide copies in
B/W. Incidentally, all three systems
are color. Now, all color systems are
based on three colors, as we all have
been taught. Well, in at least one pro-
posed system it is based on two co-
lors, the third one being supplied by
your own eye. Don’t ask me how, I
don’t know, but years ago I saw a
demonstration of color slides, admit-
tedly rather primitive, that was rather
interesting. Only two colors. were
present and it took a while to get
used to it, when all of a sudden the
third color appeared. We were told
we just imagined the third color, so
there. I haven’t the slightest idea
how it works, but it looked very good
indeed.

16/ Cinema Canada

Side Track

Anyway, the battle is probably lost.
The main TV networks in the States
are not about to give up their ENG.
But if the self-processing film is of
sufficient quality and, more impor-
tant, if it is less expensive than the
current film stock/process combina-
tion, film will have its own place a
little while longer. It is unrealistic
to believe that TV film production as
we know it will stay around for a long
time. As integrated circuitry gets
more sophisticated, electronic TV
cameras will be so simplified that
they will acquire the simplicity and
ruggedness of today’s film cameras.
And the film cameraman would do well
to acquaint himself with ENG, because
if he doesn’t, he will be quickly side-
tracked. But in the end don’t ever
forget that, however the image is
captured and preserved, it is the nut
behind the camera that counts, not the
nuts in it.

Scratch Print

Like most working cameramen
here in town, I often get calls from
people who like to get ‘‘into” film.
Many of them have had film courses
and are looking around to find an
opening. Unfortunately, there are very
few such openings, as anybody knows.
There is a big difference between the
garbage most schools and universi-
ties see fit to unload on their students,
and the hard, cold business world of
filmmaking. When I, most often gent-:
ly, remind them that there are only
so many positions in this film world,
I am reproached that I’m an old fogey
and that I’m not willing to give them
a chance. Well, giving those chances
is not up to me. I have to compete
every day out there, just like every-
body else. The film producers have
more than sufficient choice to com-
plement their staff with highly skilled
and highly competent people. So then
the unions get their share of critic-
ism for keeping young people out. This
is patently unfair too, as very few
union members have sufficient work
themselves to make a decent living
and most if not all union members I
know will scrabble around doing non-
union work at the drop of a _ hat.

So then the Canadian Society of Cine-

matographers gets the collective knife
for not doing anything to help young
would-be filmmakers. Well, here is
where they’re wrong. It is probably
not too well known yet that the C.S.C.
has .a course for camera assistants

several times a year. George Balogh
ESC runs the course and he invited
me last week to sit in and watch. So
up to Don Hall’s Cinequip, a large
rental house in Toronto.

About 12 people were listening in-
tently to Peter Luxford extolling the
virtues and vices of the Arriflex
35BL. Peter is a very experienced
assistant cameraman and has been
involved in most of the large-budget
feature films in Canada. Both he and
George carry the bulk of the training,
sometimes helped by other profes-
sionals dropping by to help out. I was
finally able to pry George loose from
the intently questioning audience and
got the following observations.

G.B.: “We started last year and
had 84 applicants and we quickly
found out it was impossible to give
any meaningful training to so many
people, so this year we carefully
sifted 12 persons from an estimat-
ed 40 applicants for the second
course. We do not take any stu-
dents unless they are, if possible,
in their last year at school. Some
of these 12 are already working
in film-related jobs; like, here we
have a secretary with Rabko Ad-
vertising who is very keen to get
behind a camera. We charge 25
bucks for the six-week course just
to make sure they’ll show up every
week. They get “hands-on’’ train-
ing on every piece of equipment
that is normally used by the came-
raman. For homework they are
welcome to go to Cinequip and to
Cinevision (now Panavision) to look
around and ask questions of the
service personnel. After the six
weeks we give them a _ 15-point.
questionnaire as an examination and
then they’re on their own.”

George doesn’t muck about and has
some pithy observations on the film
world he knows so well.

G.B.: “I was trained in Hungary
and it took me four years before
I was allowed to shoot film. At
night I also worked in the lab.
I was lucky. I worked hard and
became a cameraman through sheer
hard work. I worked in France
for fourteen years before I came
to Canada. In Europe you see 60-.
year-old camera assistants or op-
erators. It is a job classification
and that’s what they want to do.
Here in Canada, there is much less
delineation. Everyone wants to be
a cameraman and sees the role of
assistant or operator as a stepping

stone, to be discarded at the first
opportunity. I went back last sum-
mer to Hungary and found that the
film school there had stopped train-
ing cameramen until 1980. This was
to ensure that work opportunities
would exist for a graduate. Of
course I don’t advocate such a
system for North America, but it
seems to me that there is some-
how a rip-off situation with the film
schools here. More than 600
students a year are processed
through the film schools and there
is simply no way that more than,
say, 2% will ever come close
to a film camera. Even _ these
12 people here, I tell them right
away, the first day they come, that
maybe two will ever make it. Frank-
ly, the advantage of the assistants’
course is more for us C.S.C. mem-
bers than for them. We need a
small pool of trainee assistants
once inawhile. That is all.”’

I concur wholeheartedly with his
observations. On an impulse I ask

him if he is happy with his craft.
George smiles.

G.B.: “You see, if had been wiser
I should now have been a bank man-
ager, turning down loans to aspir-
ing filmmakers. And yet, to be tru-
ly happy, well, I only feel happy
when I’m on the set, when the ca-
mera starts rolling. No doubt about
it, it’s the only thing that counts.”

Answer Print

From J.R. on the West Coast a
query about the use of an 85 on ECN
‘47 stock. Why not do away with it
as the labs can color-correct it any-
way”? Well, that is true, up to a point.
The blue layer is then overexposed
relative to the red and green layers.
But the 85 will also screen out ultra-
violet. As a result you reduce the lati-
tude of the blue layer and normal
scene-to-scene grading gets very
dicey indeed. Because of the grading,
image resolution is often impaired.
Now if you shot the whole film with-

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out an 85 the labs could save you.
It'd cost you plenty extra, I can as-
sure you. But if you happen to shoot
only part of the film without the 85
you will get a color mismatch for
sure. Sorry J.R. Nice try...

Some of my faithful readers have
inquired how my black cat is doing.
A few issues back I mentioned how
I felt this cat was doing me a lot of
good, workwise. I’m happy to report
he’s still at it and work seems to be
coming my way a bit, here and there.
However, the cat being in his for-
mative years and part Siamese he
regularly woke up the dead with his
squalling so I took him to the vet
and had him altered. He’s home now, :
rather subdued.

I think I have an idea how he feels,
lately. The first reactions to last
month’s article on the CBC film
service are coming in from some
CBC film brass and |] can see that
damn scalpel glinting... I hope I can
run fast. Listen, this ain’t no joke! oO

(Nore than just an audio/visual house
(Nore than just an animation house

(Ns art services ltd. toronto msv ss1

363 - 2621

June-July 1976/17

HISTORICAL NOTES

by Peter Morris

THE FIRST FILMS IN CANADA :
THE TRUE STORY Q)

Ottawa

On a warm summer’s evening in
July 1896, 1,300 Ottawans watched
what the Ottawa Daily Citizen (July
21, 1896) described as ‘the first ex-
hibition in Canada’”’ of Edison’s Vita-
scope. Reporting on a preview show-
ing the night before, the anonymous
reviewer noted that the invited au-
dience enthused over “the creative
genius which made it possible for
life-like movements to be depicted on
canvas with such extraordinary ef-
fect’”’ and became carried away with
his own enthusiasm as he described
“the perfect representation of the
cataract in its downward course or
the billow as it curls into foam and
dashes upon the beach.”

That first exhibition took place in
the open air at West End Park, then
the westerly terminus of the Ottawa
Electric Railway Company and de-
veloped precisely to encourage peo-
ple to travel on the company’s street-
cars. Ahearn and’ Soper, owners of the
company, regularly presented ‘family’
entertainment at the park; the movies
were introduced as yet one more ad-
ditional lure for Ottawans to travel
on their streetcars. Admission to the
show itself was 10 cents but you could
buy a round-trip ticket to the park
“including car fares, admission and
reserved seat” for only 25 cents. It
was a bargain at a time when regular
theatres charged that much and more
for admission alone and boat trips up
the Ottawa River cost 50 cents.

The new Vitascope show was a big
success for Ahearn and Soper. Long
before 8:00 p.m. on that Tuesday
evening in 1896 every reserved seat
was taken and audiences touched
1,600 on evenings in the first week.
Though originally scheduled for only
two weeks, the show was _ several
times held over.

Peter Morris, after many years at the Can-
adian Film Institute, is presently working
on a book entitled The History of Canadian
Film, to be co-authored by Kirwan Cox.
The above account is extracted from the

book.

18/ Cinema Canada

John C. Green

Host of the evening’s entertainment
was John C. Green — under the name
of Belsaz, the Magician. Green was a
typical travelling showman of his day.
Born in 1866, he was on the road at
sixteen, touring with circuses, side-
shows and theatrical stock. Though he
had never seen the Vitascope, he was
not one to miss out on a new gim-
mick. Learning that Ahearn and Soper
had arranged with the Holland broth-
ers of Ottawa to bring the Vitascope

to Canada, he offered to lecture on
the new invention, perform his magic
act and describe the pictures on the
screen. (Films then had no titles and
it was the usual practice to have

someone on stage identifying the
scenes on the screen and adding his
own, often humorous, comments.)
Green was a great success at this
‘‘modern”’ show and latched onto the
movies as a permanent part of his
show. For 20 years he _ travelled

across Eastern Canada and the USA
with his movies, sings-songs and
magic shows. Most of the itinerant
movie-showmen of the time settled
down to run permanent movie thea-
tres. But Green stayed on the road
until 1917 when he joined N.L. Na-
thanson’s theatre chain and eventually
became district manager in Guelph for
Famous Players Canada. He was not
at all happy in this more ordered and
structured life and at one time com-
plained that Famous Players treated
him as though “I am serving a life
sentence with them.” In 1925, he quit
and went back to his first love — magic
and the stage. He was still active up
to his death, aged 85, in 1951.

John C. Green was host for that
first movie show; Ahearn and Soper
sponsored it. But principally respon-
sible for bringing the movies to Ca-
nada were two enterprising Ottawa
businessmen — Andrew and George
Holland.

The Holland brothers exemplify that
special entrepreneurial urge that cha-
racterized the Victorian era. They
could turn their hands to almost any-
thing — and make money. They had
been part-owners of the Ottawa Daily
Citizen until 1875 when they became
the first Senate reporters. They were
publishers and booksellers and ran a
stenographic service. From their of-
fices on Elgin Street they were agents
for such 19th century wonders as the
Edison Phonograph, the Sorley battery
and the Smith Premier typewriter.
Andrew had even travelled to Austra-
lia where he had been instrumental in
establishing a steamship service be-
tween Vancouver and Sidney. It sur-
prised their aquaintances not at all
wken the Hollands involved themselves
with yet another newfangled contrap-
tion motion pictures.

In fact, their involvement with the
movies goes back before the Vita-
scope (which projected movies onto a
screen for large audience viewing) to
the Kinetoscope, a ‘“‘peep-show” de-
vice which was the precursor of the
movies as we know them but which
allowed only one person at a time to
see the film. The Kinetoscope had
been perfected by W.K.L. Dickson in
the laboratories of Thomas Edison in

Note: In recollecting the event many years

later, John C. Green not only aggrandized
his own role but consistently put the date of
the show one month earlier. There are
other, minor, errors in his account: for
example, it was a Vitascope not a Kineto-
scope, Ahearn, not O’Hearn, and there were
certainly other Vitascopes in use in the USA
inJuly 1896 than the one in New York.

1889 but Edison considered it a toy
and was not impressed by its com-
mercial possibilities. It took some
years for the Kinetoscopes to reach
the marketplace but when they did the
agents who launched them were the
Holland brothers of Ottawa. On April
14, 1894, the Hollands opened the
world’s first Kinetoscope Parlor at
1155 Broadway in New York. It was an
instant success, a success echoed
worldwide as hundreds of similar
parlors opened. Edison was delighted
and wrote to the Hollands in Ottawa to
express his pleasure and to “hope
your firm will continue to be associat-
ed with its (the Kinetoscope’s) further
exploitation.”

It is likely the Hollands hoped so
too. The Kinetoscopes were whole-
saled by Edison for $200 and retailed
for $300-$350.

Edison was now convinced motion
pictures had a future — albeit a short
one, he predicted — and two years
later put his name on a machine in-
vented by Thomas Armat that could
project movies onto a screen. “Edi-
son’s’” Vitascope was first present-
ed in New York on April 23, 1896
to instant public acclaim. Given the
Holland brothers’ success with the
Kinetoscope, it is not surprising Edi-
son granted them sole and exclusive
Canadian rights to the new Vitascope.
And, given their Ottawa origins and
close business links with Ahearn and
Soper of the Ottawa Electric Railway
Company, no more surprising that
they should choose to launch the Vi-
tascope in Ottawa at a park carved
out of land originally owned by them.
The street that runs through what was
once West End Park is now called
Holland Avenue — though nothing
marks it as the place the movies came
to Canada.

Toronto

Several weeks later, during the To-
ronto Industrial Exhibition (later, the
CNE), the movies arrived in Toronto.

In fact, two competing devices open-

ed almost simultaneously: Edison’s
Vitascope and Lumiere’s Cinémato-
graphe. (There were, of course, no
standards for equipment or film
stock; the several American, French
and British machines that came onto
the market in 1896 were all non-com-
patible.)

The Vitascope opened at Robinson’s
Musée, 81 Yonge Street. on August
31, 1896, presented by Ed Houghton, a
touring showman like John C. Green.
Robinson’s was a multifaceted place
of entertainment, incorporating a me-

HISTORICAL NOTES

nagerie on the roof, a curio shop on
the second floor, the Wonderland in
the basement and the Bijou Theatre on
the main floor offering vaudeville. The
movies were shown downstairs in the
Wonderland as one of several attrac-
tions (including waxworks) the patron
saw for his dime. As some measure
of the movies’ status it is curious to
note that a demonstration of ‘Pro-
fessor Roentgen’s Great X-Rays”
commanded a higher admission price
(25¢) and enjoyed a more prominent
location in the lobby of the Bijou
Theatre. The Vitascope show conti-
nued for six weeks. During the week
of September 19th, films were pres-
ented of “the cataract of Niagara
Falls and the whirlpool rapids’ — the
first time Canadian scenery appeared
on the movie screen but a foretaste
of the deluge of Niagara Falls films
and similar exploitations of Canadian
scenery that flooded the screens in
the ensuing decade.

The Lumiére Cinématographe open-
ed a day later, on September 1, as
part of the grandstand show at the
Toronto Industrial Exhibition. Re-
sponsible for the show was H.J. Hill,
well known as a born showman who
had introduced the grandstand show as
manager of the Exhibition. He made a
deal with Lumieére’s travelling agent,
Félix Mesguich, for the showing of
the Cinématographe not only at the
Exhibition but throughout Ontario.
When the Exhibition closed, he trans-
ferred the show to 96-98 Yonge Street
(opposite Robinson’s Musée) and later
toured Ontario with great success.

(to be continued in Cinema Canada no. 30)

Note: The above is written in
response to Gary Evans’ “The First
Films in Canada” (Cinema Canada,
no. 26) which repeats, for the ump-
teenth time and without further re-
search, two anecdotes about the first
film shows in Canada. Both are
wrong: Ernest Ouimet’s in substance
and John C. Green’s in detail. A
thorough search of French and Eng-
lish-language newspapers in Montreal,
Ottawa and Toronto, plus a knowledge
of when the various film devices were
invented and marketed proves beyond
a reasonable doubt that the Ottawa
show on July 21 (not June), 1896 was
the first in Canada. The presentation
of this conclusion in Dreamland was
based, not on Anglophones “favoring”’
John C. Green’s story over that of
Ernest Ouimet, nor indeed on recol-
lected, anecdotal evidence at all, but
on contemporary, documented evi-
dence.

June-July 1976/19

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20/ Cinema Canada

Wednesday, June 2, 1976
‘Taxi Driver’ Is
Grand Prix Pic
At Cannes Fest

By GENE MOSKOWITZ

Cannes, June 1.

Despite Cannes Film Festival
jury chief Tennessee Williams’ out-
burst against violence in films,
Columbia’s ‘‘Taxi Driver’’ copped
the Grand Prize, the Gold Palm, at
the fest, which wound Friday (28).
Best actor was Jose Luis Gomez in
a Spanish film, “The Family Of
Pascal Duarte,” and actress award
was split between Dominique
Sanda (Italy’s ‘‘The Ferramonti
Inheritance’) and Mari Torocsik
(Hungary’s ‘‘Where Are You, Mrs.
Dery?’’).

The special jury prize was divid-
ed between the Hispano ‘Raise
Crows,” directed by Carlos Saura,
and the West German ‘Die Mar-
quise Von ‘O,’ ” directed by Eric
Rohmer. Martin Scorsese, who di-
rected ‘Taxi Driver,’’ was passed
over for directing prize in favor of
Ettore Scola, for an Italian comedy,

“Ugly, Dirty & Horrible.”

International critic award Ed
| Shared by two West Germ _ pixel

Wim Wenders 0. .pRere e Of
Time AC der Kluge’ Ss
‘ rand Die Starke.”
SS. also took Golden Palm for
ae cae Barry Greenwald’s
‘‘Metamorphosis,”’’ with two other
prizes for shorts going to “Night-
life,"’ by Robin Lehman of the U.S.,
and the Belgian animated short
‘‘Agulana,” by Gerald Frydman.
“Peed he award given by the Com-
que in ee

missi Ofek.
went to einai —

a met ‘Fang : & Claw,’ “by G Gerard)

“rancois P ‘u-

Despite Variety’s affirmation, it was a Cana-
dian film which won the Golden Palm in the
short film category. Above is the Canadian
Ambassador to France, Gérard Pelletier,
accepting the award for absent Barry Green-
wald

WINNERS

Golden Palm
Taxi Driver
by Martin Scorsese

Special Jury Prize ex-aequo
Cria Cuervos

by Carlos Saura

Die Marquise Von ‘O’
by Eric Rohmer

Best Actress ex-aequo
Mari Torocsik
in Deryne, Hol Van
Dominique Sanda

in L’Eredita Ferramonti

Best Actor
José Luis Gomez
in Pascual Duarte

Best Director
Ettore Scola
for Brutti, Sporchi, Cattivi

Golden Palm for Short Film
Metamorphosis
by Barry Greenwald

First Jury Prize for a Short Film
Agulana by Gerald Frydman

Second Jury Prize for a Short Film
Nightlife by Robin Lehman

This year’s Cannes Festival is over... all over but the shouting, as they say. The three ar-
ticles that follow are Cinema Canada’s collective shout, after which we will say no more.

Connie Tadros reports the satisfied chortles and the gnashing of teeth which came from the
Canadian businessmen who bought and sold and made deals at Cannes. Marc Gervais fol-
lows with three cheers for the folks down under who proved that Australian cinema is alive
and well and overtaking Canadian cinema on the international scene. Lastly, Natalie Ed-
wards interviews Barry Greenwald, and Cinema Canada joins all of you in offering a hip-
hip-hooray to this young filmmaker who won the Golden Palm for his short film Metamor-

phosis.

June-July 1976/21

cannes (1)

commercial
results

by Connie T'adros

A conservative estimate of the volume of business actually
done by Canada at the Cannes Festival this year sets sales
at about $1,000,000 with about 85 per cent of the total going
to Cinepix of Montreal. Other figures are quoted, one as
high as $2,000,000. In six months’ time, when all the results
are in, the actual total will probably fall somewhere between
these two figures.

Although twice as much business was done this year as
last, the successes were more evenly distributed in 1975.
This year Bill Fruet’s thriller Death Weekend had grossed
$800,000 in cash advances by the end of June, and had been
sold to all available territories, according to André Link.
The combined advances on Cinepix’s other films (East End
Hustle by Frank Vitale, The Mystery of the Million-Dollar
Hockey Puck by Jean Lafleur and Peter Svatek, The Su-
preme Kid by Peter Bryant and La téte de Normande St-
Onge by Gilles Carle) had grossed about $200,000 by the
end of June.

Cinepix and Compass Sales (the world sales branch of
Quadrant of Toronto) are the only two Canadian companies
who go to Cannes as sales agents for a good number of
Canadian features. Compass’s performance was ‘below
expectations” according to Sam Jephcott. While in a normal
year, 50 per cent of Compass’s sales are made during the
Festival, this year’s activity amounted to about half that
figure. None of the films it represented (Find the Lady
by John Trent, The Keeper by Thomas Drake and Love at
First Sight by Rex Bromfield) attracted much attention
during the Festival. Jephcott reported at the end of June
that a distribution deal had been concluded for Love at
First Sight with Atlantic Releasing in the States. The deal

includes a ‘“‘healthy” cash advance, a percentage, and pro-

vides for a simultaneous opening in Canada and the States.
Find the Lady has also been sold to a US independent but
Jephcott was disappointed in the deal and commented during
the Festival that the lukewarm response to Quadrant produc-

22/ Cinema Canada

Y

tions like Lady will lead to a change of production orienta-
tion at Quadrant. ‘‘At Cannes, there is only room for real
quality films or very commercial exploitation films. The
films that fall in between, you bury them,” he said. And
Cannes was doing that, mercilessly, to many Canadian
features.

Charles Chaplin of International Film Distributors re-
presented two films: the International-CBC co-production
The Man Inside by Gerald Mayer and Point of No Return
by Ed Hunt. Neither film made any sales. Chaplin, weary
after battling his way through the enormous crowds this
year, commented that there is now ‘“‘too much chaos to
accomplish anything logically” at Cannes, and that the net
result of this year’s Festival was ‘‘discouraging, aggravating
and upsetting.’ During the last five days of the Festival he
had appointments every half-hour: a rhythm which no man can
follow and remain unscathed. Echoing the thoughts of some,
Chaplin wished that he could pass up the Festival completely
but, remembering that it’s the only place in the world where
one can meet so many film people at one time, commented
that he can’t yet do without it.

Pierre David from Films Mutuel sounded just as discour-
aged when he said caustically that Mutuel had hoped to pay
for the copies and advertising of Mustang through its world
sales... The understanding was that the film hadn’t even done
that well. Neither did Les ordres by Michel Brault (back
for the second time) or Bingo by Jean-Claude Lord (back
for the third time) do any business worth mentioning. David
concludes that ‘“‘French-Canadian films are a problem to
sell as they are presently made. Films made in Quebec,
for Quebec, won’t sell on the world market.”

The Far Shore by Joyce Wieland and L’eau chaude |’eau
frette by André Forcier were being handled by their pro-
ducers. Both Joyce Wieland and Judy Steed were watching
over The Far Shore and benefitted from the good sales

. counsel of Linda Beath from New Cinema. When they got

photo by Federico

= i eo : e
André Link and Ivan Reitman, producers of Death Weekend, soaking
up the sun :

onto the intricacies of making a film successful at Cannes
they decided not to push the film this year but to come back
next year with an appropriate campaign, including the
necessary hype, and to try again. Bernard Lalonde from
l’Association cooperative des productions audio-visuelles,
producer of Forcier’s film (which ran in the Directors’
Fortnight) made some sales to European countries by relying
on the advice of Armand Cournoyer from the Canadian Film
Development Corp. Lalonde admitted that ‘‘doing-it-yourself”’
at Cannes was not an easy thing and that, though one learns
an enormous amount by trying, sales might have been better
had an old hand been representing the film.

Besides having entered The Far Shore, Linda Beath was
representing the Crawley film The Man Who Skied Down
Everest, and sales of this film constituted the biggest suc-
cess story that wasn’t of the Festival. With 15 firm offers
and world TV sales under her belt, Beath received word
from home that Crawley was before an arbitration court in
California after a complaint by the American co-producers
of the film. She had to stop dealing immediately and must
now wait for the court’s decision before finalizing the con-
tracts. The loss will be substantial.

Don Shebib’s Second Wind was being sold by the American
Arnold Kopelson, and producer Les Weinstein feared that
the film had become just one of many for the sales agent
and was not being adequately pushed. There was ‘nothing
exciting”’ to report.

As for A Sweeter Song by Allan Eastman, producer Antho-
ny Kramreither reports that he signed a world sales and
US distribution deal on April 30 with Bob Hope’s company
Epoh. The terms: $250,000 for US distribution with a $50,000
cash advance. TV sales are not included. So though Kram-
reither was prepared to come to Cannes, that wasn’t neces-
sary. He did comment that the offers he got from the Cannes
showings of the film were inferior and that he wouldn’t have
accepted them. (Kramreither also commented that he has
become an ardent believer in the “back-door policy’ to
Canadian distribution and world sales: first you sell it and
open it in the States, then you make your Canadian distribu-
tion deal. ‘‘Any film which has opened in the US will do
better on the marketplace afterwards.’’)

Even the National Film Board had nothing to report except
a few TV sales and theatrical distribution in France for

Le temps de l’avant by Anne-Claire Poirer, a film which
ran in the Critics’ Week.

Astral Bellevue-Pathé had a postcript to add to the Cannes
dealing. As of the end of June, reports Alfred Pariser,
The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane had grossed
$750,000 in world sales. The film is an official Franco-
Canadian co-production and, though Pariser wouldn’t give
the amount of the Astral investment, he did state that Astral
was a “majority stockholder’. Astral’s Breaking Point
was not at Cannes because Fox, the co-producer, already
holds world sales rights and will distribute the film through
its own worldwide network.

The independents

Two Canadian films cropped yp in Cannes which weren’t
on the official lists and which didn’t benefit from the corpo-
rate publicity of the Secretary of State’s Festivals Bureau.
The first, The Last Cause, produced by Sandy McLeod, is
a 165-minute documentary on the International Brigades
which volunteered for the Spanish Civil War. It was re-
presented by its director, Alex Cramer. Because the film
was only available in 16 mm, it was shown in a small
screening room in the Palais des Festivals and Cramer said
that few of the distributors he had hoped to interest actually
showed up for the screenings. For films like his, ‘‘Cannes
doesn’t matter.’ He had made his contacts before the
Festival and had to follow up afterwards. Cannes was just
a “‘crazy”’ episode.

Steven Alix was there too with Angel Johnny, produced
by Dalix Films in Montreal. This hard-core, all-male porno
film played to packed houses but made no sales. Alix com-
mented that the censor boards all over the world were a
problem and that he could foresee sales only to Sweden and
Denmark. Nevertheless, the film had already opened in
New York and may be coming to us too through the back door.

The producers

Once the distributors and world sales agents are ac-
counted for, there are still a lot of businessmen in Cannes
sitting in the cafés and dealing with a great lot of money.
This was the year for the producers, and co-productions
were in the making everywhere. Even the CFDC was behind
closed doors, trying to wrap up a Canada-West Germany co-
production treaty.

Harve Sherman, there for the first time and surrounded
by others from Ashling Multimedia, found it an exhilarating
experience. In his words, producers need to broaden their
power base and must use Cannes to do so. It ‘‘broadens the
spectrum”’; it was ‘mind-blowing’. Ashling was promoting
a few projects of its own, and was on the lookout for new
productions in which to participate. Sherman found that the
reaction of foreigners to producing in Canada was mixed,
and blamed the lack of concrete attitudes on the part of the
government and other Canadian producers.

Both Cinepix and Quadrant reported a lot of co-produc-
tion interest, especially under the new Canada-Great
Britain treaty. Louise Ranger who, with six others, is
establishing a new production company in Montreal, used
the occasion to announce Gilles Carle’s next feature, L’exit.
She found that Cannes was a good place to raise support and
money from fellow Canadians. Pierre David got support for
Mutuel’s production of Jean-Claude Lord’s next feature.

Perhaps the most telling comments of all came from
Michael Spencer of the CFDC and André Lamy of the NFB.
At different times, and separately, each said, “I’ve learned
so much.” Perhaps. once the confusion of Cannes gets so
extreme that no one will be able to make any sense out of
the experience whatsoever, film people will still be going
once yearly to sit in the sun, to see each other’s films, to
talk among themselves and to learn ‘“‘so much” about the
realities of film and the commercial world market. 0

June-July 1976/23

cannes ()

the year
of the kangaroo

by Marc Gervais

few the teak >

‘a rare film because I can't think of anybody
who wouldnt be absolutely enthralled
...Mike Harris THE AUSTRALIAN

In Cannes, just one short year ago (May, 1975), the film
Australians were looking at the film Canadians with envy.
And they wanted to learn from us — they, the younger Com-
monwealth nation with their 13 million population, looking
up to Big Brother (or Big Sister) with our 21 millions, and
our bouncy feature film presence at the Cannes Film
Festival.

One short year ago — and now, to all intents and purposes,
forget it. At the moment, Australia is out of sight, way
ahead of us. And thereby hangs a tale or a moral with
some pertinent lessons.

The simple truth of the matter is that in spite of foreign
sales that may even exceed last year’s record, Canadian
feature films in Cannes caused nary a ripple. Au con-
traire: foreign critics expressed positive disappointment
with the artistic output of a country that seemed, these
last years, to be heading toward major achievement.

Whereas the Australians... !

And this leads to certain reflections about why the
Australian situation is so good, and why the Canadian so
lackluster.

24/ Cinema Canada

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It’s not that the Aussies are turning out masterpieces.
No, Down Under there are as yet no John Fords or Mizo-
guchis or Bergmans or even a Francis Ford Coppola. I
would even go further. In terms of esthetic awareness and
esthetic experimentation, the Aussies have not shown the
type of concern (or matching achievement) of some aspects
of the direct cinema of Allan King a few years ago, or of
certain Québécois cinéastes such as Perrault, Lefebvre,
Brault.

Furthermore, I do not mean to imply that there was
nothing Canadian that was worthy of interest this year in
Cannes. Certainly, Don Shebib’s Second Wind is an ex-
cellent film for all the lukewarm response it received
from some Canadian critics. And one has to admire the
rigorous and ascetical probing spirit behind two of the
Québécois films in side festivals, Jean-Pierre Lefebvre’s
L’amour blessé and Anne-Claire Poirier’s Le temps de
avant. André Forcier’s L’eau chaude l’eau frette, too,
is a highly local, but brilliant black comedy, the product
of considerable talent — and of that nihilistic repulsion

that has too often become a trademark of the Québécois
cultural stance.

And it is only fair to add that a lot of intelligent effort
by a lot of people has gone into making the Canadian
feature film industry well known by distributors and critics
around the world. And that is to the good.

However...

Being exposed to a number of Australian films in Cannes
has brought this observer face to face with something so
obvious, so close to us, that maybe we can’t see it. By ‘“‘we’’,
I mean the type of people who read Cinema Canada, no
less. Or who should read it.

Why was our output of 24 or so features this year so
uninspiring? What’s wrong with the Canadian film industry?
(Now there’s a real Canadian-type question! )

There are certain answers that by now are maturing
into some kind of consensus. By all means, we must go on
struggling for a better distribution deal. Nothing less than
to be maitres chez nous, to be sure. And we’ve got to get
that Canadian Constitution working in the film area: the
provincial governments have to be made to get together with
the federal to levy a tax on every ticket sold at the Cana-
dian box office, the revenue from which will be poured back
into Canadian feature filmmaking (according to norms
which will be worked out). In that way, Godfather, Exor-
cist, and Jaws will continue to take millions back to the
States, but at the same time help make our own film
industry viable.

All of this is essential. But something else is at least
equally essential — and there the blame (yes, blame) lies
squarely with the mental attitudes of Canadian film direc-
tors, writers, producers, the people running the Canadian
Film Development Corporation and critics. Somewhere
along the line, we’ve lost our contact with the lifethrob,
we've become asphyxiated with the smallness of certain
intellectual obsessions, or maybe just money-making ob-
sessions. It means nothing less than overcoming our myo-
pia, or breaking free from our tunnel vision or, better still,
broadening our cultural concerns beyond the pathetic, self-
centered negativism of cynical self-inhibition that is
rendering our own film scene rather sterile.

I’m not going to discuss individual Canadian films shown
at Cannes. And, obviously, the past and present have
furnished some pretty magnificent exceptions to today’s
general trend. But by focussing on what the Australians
have been doing, our own dominant pattern may appear with
greater (and more disconcerting) clarity.

The Canadians had some 24 features at Cannes, the
Australians some eight or nine out of this past year’s
production of 14. And yet, the Aussies outsold us interna-
tionally by a huge margin. One Aussie representative told
me, towards the end of the Festival, that their international
sales at Cannes alone would more than pay for the entire
peace costs of all the Australian features made last
year!

Not only that, but of the 14 most recent Australian
features released in Australia, 11 have already made back
all their costs at the home box office alone. In other words,
the 13 million Aussies (English-speaking and ergo facing,
just as we do, the Yank competition et al.) love their own
films. And they flock to them.

Because, mate, the films are ruddy good, that’s why.
Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Devil’s Playground, Mad

Dog, The Trespassers, The Fourth Wish, Caddie — here

are fresh, intelligent, often exciting, often lovely films.

As one analyzes these movies, and studies the Aussie
situation, certain patterns emerge. By and large, for one
thing, the directors and producers and writers are young.

Marc Gervais, Montreal film critic, is an associate professor in
the department of communication arts at Concordia University.
He is the author of Pier Paolo Pasolini, edited by Seghers in Pa-
ris.

Far more important, they tackle subjects they seem
genuinely interested in, and they treat them in their own
fashion. Unlike most Canadian films, Aussie movies are
well scripted, and they do not look like cheap imitations
of American exploitation flicks, weighed down with the
same tired film language and clichés.

The Australian films touch on deeper, wider human
experiences. They do not cultivate a kind of mindless nihil-
ism. They do not conform to some dominant recipe. Some-
how, out of it all, their films sing a song to people, to life,
no matter how tough the context or situation may be.

Totally Australian, totally filled with breathtaking images
of their own country, they nevertheless have an enormous
appeal for everyone, simply because they are human (how-
ever one may define the term), rather than exploitative or
hermetically sealed-in. They definitely are not the sort
of one-dimensional products of a cynical commercialism
that threatens our own film scene.

Will the absurd economics that dominate Canadian film
life permit these films to be seen in Canada? And if so,
will Canadians, so brainwashed (along with their neighbours
to the South) into wanting to see only the reigning movie
recipes of the moment, be permitted to awaken from their
cultural stupor? And will Canadian film folk (writers, direc-
tors, producers, critics, and the CFDC) take a look at the
Australians, and find inspiration to break out of the trap
they have helped build for themselves?

For the English-Canadians especially, it seems to me,
are playing a desperate game. In their frantic attempt to
break into the American market, they are making of the
feature film industry in Canada a cheap imitation factory
of those American exploitation films (violence, horror,
etc.) we know so well, and in so doing, helping to create or
perpetuate the cultural wasteland. What is it, for example,
that has motivated William Fruet to make a slick violence
flick like Death Weekend? One fears the marketing/financ-
ing policy of the CFDC is in great measure responsible
for the present state of affairs.

Surely, there are writers, directors, and technicians who
are not bound by the tunnel vision that seems to be
determining our film evolution. Surely they have something
they wish to express, something they genuinely feel, along
with the adequate skills...

But that brings us to another aspect of the situation. No
one can dictate how anyone (including a director or a
writer) is supposed to relate to life, or to feel about this
or that aspect of life. But our cultural/intellectual elite
(please include film critics and great sections of the whole
communications field) have become shrivelled up in their
own negativity. Our cultural stance is one of fear of such
things as action, hope, celebration, creativity. And so, the
outlawing of huge areas of topics and concerns. There is
no question that the dominant attitude is that of the downer.
A kind of small, rationalistic cynicism succeeds in reduc-
ing everything to its own reduced dimensions. In that sterile
climate, the imagination has little chance, and film creati-
vity becomes desperately inhibited.

As a result, Canadian audiences do not respond to the
home product. On the one hand, they find the eternal downer
theme, with the concomitant lack of enthusiasm and positive
thrust, a bore. Or, on the other, they prefer the slick
(albeit usually redneck and stupid) American commercial
product to the less slick Canadian imitation.

So, in rethinking our film situation, we had better take
a look at the films themselves, and, going all the way, at
the smallness of attitude of the mentors of our cultural
life. As one immediate application of this, the CFDC had
better junk its policy of subservience to US commercial
distribution. The best way to get our films distributed
outside Canada is to make good films, not to set up all sorts
of creative roadblocks (recipes, imitations, etc.).

If the Aussies can do it, why can’t we? 0

June-July 1976/25

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June-July 1976/27

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At 22 Barry Greenwald honors his native land with a

Palme d’Or from the International Film Festival in Cannes
for his short film Metamorphosis.

Born in Montreal of immigrant parents,
Russian, his father a German Jew, Barry was brought up in
Toronto and attended a number of North York schools. He
acquired his first enthusiasm for film under the expert
guidance of a transplanted Czech working for the North York
Board of Education instructing a film course. Barry was 16.

Miloslavy Kubik had a documentary film studio in Bratis-
lava, but was now running a 16 mm summer film course.
He took an interest in me, and pushed me pretty hard, and I
think I developed some sort of basic discipline, some kind of
work habits. I directed my first few films. At first it was
an interest but it wasn’t anything I was going to pursue, but
by the time I finished high school it seemed natural to me
that I was going to go into a film course. Another Czech,
Vasek Taborsky, who was a friend of Milo’s, was at Cones-
toga, so that’s why I went there.

What do you think of Conestoga as a film school? Have you
had a chance to compare it with others?

It’s really good because someone made a _ bureaucratic
mistake and they got 10 times more equipment than any
other school. It was one of the. first community colleges to
open, and Davis was the Minister of Education, so as a re-

28/ Cinema Canada

his mother a.

Barry Greenwald, director of Metamorphosis

J
|

sult it had a lot of equipment, and both Vasek And Frank
Valert, another chap, were there. I was told they were ex-
cellent people; they both studied at Famu, a Czech film
school. Conestoga was a good school in that you could do
things there, but like anything else, it’s so difficult to teach
a bunch of egocentric 18-year-old kids how to do things.

There was Frank and there was Vasek and Richard Clark,
who was supposed to teach us film history. He was really
nice; he just showed movies. We had movies every Tuesday
afternoon, we saw all the big films for three years, and they
never repeated the program, and there was no lecture, no
speeches or anything. And that was a lot of fun.

Well, Vasek became really disappointed, I think, because
he had this impression he was coming to this new country
with a potentially fantastic film industry, and here were
these young people he was going to mold in the Czech tra-
dition of film school. And it didn’t work out. Too naive an
impression — so he left because of money problems, be-
cause they were cutting money out of the program. There
were politics. Radio and television were getting more
money. So he went to Algonquin College.

Frank Valert was very disappointed also. You see, Frank
was actually an assistant professor in Prague, and he’s shot
a whole pile of films. So he’s gone to Los Angeles, and is

now at UCLA.

You were lucky...

We were all lucky. That was the last year we ee those
people. There were about 30 in the first year in the class,
but by the time we graduated there were about 10 of us and

only a few finished films. Like Neil Warren, Andrew Ruhl,
whose film Pedestrians was a finalist at Cannes last year,
Ken Ilass, Rob Wallace, and myself.

How are they all getting on?

Well, Rob’s at Crawley’s now, Andrew’s working on a
Council grant, of course, and Neil is continuing with his
plasticene. The people who got serious about it did really
well.

You ’ve made six films now?

Yes. I made three short films in high school, and three,
including Metamorphosis, while I was at Conestoga... well,
at Conestoga, everyone worked on everyone else’s films.
There was a lot of opportunity to try everything.

Barry’s first three short films are Etude, Tangents and
Agamemnon the Lover made in 1970 and 1971 under the
tutelage of Miloslav Kubik. He describes Etude as a five-
minute film about a couple going to the airport, whom we
watch getting ready to leave. Only at the end do we realize
they are parting, and the man is left behind. North York
entered all the films made in its program in various festi-
vals, and Etude was a finalist at Cinestud in Amsterdam.
Tangents was a disaster, says Barry, and involved a hitch-
hiker who ends up exactly where he started after taking
rides with four diverse types, a businessman, a girl, a
priest and a farmer. It took third prize at a competition
York University organized for high school student films,

As for Agamemnon the Lover, it was 5'» minutes of lim-
ited animation illustrating the problems of a man who is an
expert on love being exploited by those who want his secret.
It didn’t work, was absurd in its view of love, and the come-

dy wasn't that good, says Barry. Technically, however, it
was interesting.

What’s
course?

It carried on. He stayed. He’s still there at the North
York Board of Education. He’s the camera. person there.
But their program was cut because they didn’t have the
money for it. They once had an actual screen education
consultant, so now they have all this equipment, but he’s
just doing small films now. But he does that set of Animette
Canada Puppet Films you might have heard of — a whole
series of them, at least 100.

The thing with Milo was — I was 16 at the time — I don’t
know, it almost turned into a kind of friendship and I spent a
lot of time sitting down and talking, skipping classes, and
just going ‘cause I liked it so much...

happened to Miloslav Kubik? And the summer

Sounds like a master-apprentice relationship...
How would you judge the Czech influence on you, then? How
do you like Czech films?

Oh, I love them. What these people gave me, especially
Miloslav, is a very human attitude towards film, very much
in the Czech tradition. Those were the kind of films that I
was nuts about.

It’s sort of obvious — your film is very Czech...
I like black humour, too. I went to Czechoslovakia, and I
saw some of those films. It was a great trip.

When did you go?

I went in 1973 to the actual Eastern bloc. I went to Poland,
Czechoslovakia, all the countries. It’s so great for a west-
erner to go there. There’s no one else — no tourists, except
Russians wearing polka-dot shirts and striped pants — and
people really like to meet you, and it’s very warm, very...
ten years slower than it is here. The arts there are sort of
state-supported, and Prague is amazing — there’s just so
much happening!

I was considering going to the school there because it
seemed a natural step after I finished. I talked to the people
there, and I’d been accepted, but as a matter of fact ’d have
had to pay a lot of money and there’s the problem of a whole
other culture. So what are you going to do — spend five
years in Czechoslovakia and that whole thing and come
out...? You’d be spaced out completely. Culturally, it’s not
my world, and I would have been in trouble because I get
the impression that they do resent westerners.

So, if you didn’t train there, still you think you’d like to do
more training?

I'd like... I have the idea of a film academy that is really
excellent — you know, fantastic professors who push you
like crazy and really force you to work.

Where do you think you're going to find that?
Oh, it doesn’t exist.

Now, about Metamorphosis, tell me the physical things. How
long is it, how much did it cost?

It’s 10 min. 33 sec. About $1000 (film stock, lab work,
sound mix) and took approximately 4 months to edit.

And Bob Green?

Bob Green is a resident Galt artist and a drummer in a
jazz band. He’s a completely kooky flipped-out guy with a
fantastic sense of black humour, who won’t talk to me any
more after that... because the experience of having to go to
Toronto every Sunday night to shoot between midnight and
7 in the morning with a 19 or 20-year-old punk, as he used
to call me, was stupid.

And he had to take his clothes off — you know, click click
click, single frame, make a mistake and you have to go back
to the top. And, you know, I could have done it a lot simpler;
I could have had just one shot, and then intercut. But I want-
ed to maintain perfect continuity, and I’m meticulous,’ cause
I'm anut.

If you watch that film you'll see that everything’s perfect,
there are no mistakes as far as continuity — but I drove him
crazy.

How long did it take to shoot?

Well, we shot the whole film in Waterloo. Getting an elev-
ator isn’t very easy. So we went to the university. And I had
a cameraman and we shot the whole thing. Then we found out
the shutter was in the wrong position. It had all flashed. Right
away I was back at the beginning, and I had to convince him
that we had to do it again. And I told him it would be in To-
ronto. He thought we were idiots and wouldn’t do it. But he
did.

Did you pay him?

I paid him. I was still dabbling in oils, so I paid him off in
canvases, and gave him practically everything I owned as
well. But he wasn’t very happy. It was an ugly thing, and I
learned very much about what people will and won’t do when
they volunteer for a project. This is the whole thing with in-
dependent filmmakers. And he’s beautiful, he’s exquisite,
he’s a genius. The way he came off in that film! It wouldn’t
work without that quality that he has.

How did you find him?

That was a matter of just asking friends. I tried going
to normal actors, and they all were very inappropriate.
Someone suggested this man for the story, that he was just
perfect. So I got in touch with him. That was the most im-
portant thing — I spent a long time, like months, before I
found him, and when I found him I knew instantly he was the
right person. But that’s the way it should be. I had that in-
tuition.

June-July 1976/29

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30/ Cinema Canada

He went along?

Yes, he thought it sounded interesting. It appealed to his
sense of absurdity. And for his double, we went to a lot of old
folks’ homes. We tried makeup and it looked ludicrous.

What about the ending, the choral background?
Well, there were various different endings.

Such as?

Well, you could have a radio newscast, which would be ter-
rible. You could have a clock ticking, which is so goddam
cliché. I thought the Gregorian chant was much better, but it
was some kind of open hall or space I wanted to sense.

And then — well, the thing was, how do you top off what has
happened? In one you see him pushing a button that says In-
finity. Or you see the elevator going through the ceiling and
into orbit, or hear a newscast about this strange old man
being unidentified — Vasek’s pet idea; he wouldn’t talk to me
for about 2 weeks: ‘“‘You don’t like my idea? I won’t talk to
you.”

You have to be pretty strong-minded?

Everyone had their impression. I didn’t know what to do.
The ending is what disappoints me...

That’s not good enough. And another weakness is the begin-
ning of the film. A lot of people are still confused. The pac-
ing is a little off. It’s very natural, very slow, and they watch
it and they say, “‘Oh, not another student film about a guy
with a boring life,” or something like that. I tried very very
hard with the sound to create something, but it never happens
— no one knows how to play it right. The thing builds up to.a
crescendo, and the sound track is mixed like that, but for
some reason they play it way too loud, so that by the time it
gets to the high level it distorts it, and it sounds so low, it
doesn’t have the proper significance. I very carefully in-
creased it in certain steps, till he gets to the Television
stage, and there’s a barrage of sounds — which builds up the
headache... it doesn’t quite work.

Where did you find the lady who meets the elevator each
day?

That’s Ali Kubik, that’s Miloslav’s wife. She’s been an
opera singer, and she’s just a fantastic woman, she works
really hard on those puppet films...

We shot at York. They were very cooperative, but they
didn’t want their name mentioned, they said, because they
didn’t know what I was doing. All the workmen there, all the
cleaning people, they loved it, they just loved to watch all
these nuts with all the equipment and everything.

So how long did it take to shoot?

Well, actually I think over about 10 weekends. That was
the second time. The first time it was easier because they
let us have the elevator for two weekends complete. Actually
the shooting was a pain in the ass, but when you think about it
now, it was all for the best.

What about using colour, or will you continue to work in
black and white?

Oh, black and white — it’s exquisite. But no one’s going
to buy it—well, TV (CBC) in Montreal picked it up. The
print’s available.

It’s funny, Famous was so negative about Metamorphosis,
even after gave me that $100 cash award. They wouldn’t
even let it in the door. My whole luck was struck with Rock
Demers of Faroun films. After Rock said hello, he said
‘Come to Montreal.” I’ve heard some great stories about
Rock — he’s always picking up films that he loves but he
can’t sell. And so I didn’t know what his intentions were.
But he was really completely surprised, you know, at cer-
tain things that have happened. I guess he was in Cannes to
try to sell the film. Well, Gerald Pratley playing it at
Stratford really helped me out.

Cooking breakfast on the way down in Metamorphosis

How did you approach Gerald?

Vasek knows Gerald. He said well, look, you have these
programs and here are two or three Conestoga shorts, do
you want to play them? The shorts played and were well
received.

I was hurt by the thing at the Student Film Festival. But
that was a good hurt.

Because they only gave you a general award?

The worst thing was the film played there and the au-
dience cracked up. It was a student audience, people were
drunk, loud, laughing... and people came up to me saying
“Oh, it’s great, you’re going to win...” So, I didn’t expect
to win at first, but, I thought here I’m going to get something
in a major category, and then all those nutty things happened,
and there was a bit of a fiasco, and it got disorganized. But
it hurt me, because it was my peer group and that was im-
portant. It shattered me, but that was good.

I went to the Film Board because I wanted to get on the
director’s course, to work with Vladimir Valenta, another
Czech — my God, what could be more fantastic? — and I
went there and saw Roman Kroiter, and he looked at my film
and he said, “It’s garbage — nothing worthwhile. It’s self-
indulgent.” He said, “That film doesn’t convince me you
have any ability to deal with anything. Show me something
else.” I had some other films that I felt were even more
human, like my first film, very simple, very human, and he
said that was just as bad and I should go to the theatre — and
this all affected me, and I thought about it and I said, he’s
right. This short film has just one guy in it, there’s no
dialogue, there’s no characterization, there’s no interaction.

Yes, yes. Too bad he doesn’t like me enough to give me a
chance.

Milo did that all the time. He’s never let anything go to
my head. When I was younger I was a little more egocentric
and he cut me down all the time.

That does me good. After the Film Board I came back, and
Rock told me it was doing well, and then at Yorkton, it
picked up an award.

What has it got so far? Shown at Stratford, best sound
editing at CFA, and at Yorkton...?

Best film award at Yorkton. And
Filmex... °

it was selected for

And now Cannes.

And this is a year and a half after the film’s finished and
everything, and it’s all past... it’s so far away. I mean it’s
good it happened now...

How did it get to Cannes?
Rock Demers entered it. Serge Losique actually had it
blown up to 35 mm.

Your inspiration for Metamorphosis came partly from
Vasek’s description of a short story he once read?
Yes, he told it to me and I liked it.

.

One of the benefits of that film at Cannes was, of course, that
you didn’t have to have the language to understand it.

That’s one thing I don’t like either — why do I need to have
titles in the film? Why does the film need to have words on
the screen? Those dates... I wanted to show the progression
of time, and I wanted it to be very clear so people wouldn’t
think he did this all in a week. I don’t know how important
that is. But I don’t think films need words on the screen. I
should have challenged myself and found another way to make
the transitions. So I’m not happy with that. And of course I’m
not happy with the title at all. I mean now I call it Osmosis.

Is there anything else you'd do differently if you were doing
it over again?

I did the best I could. I worked really hard. I was lucky they
had Steenbeck machines, because I couldn’t have cut the stuff
on a Moviola. I had to use a Steenbeck. There’s a lot of tracks
in the film; very ambitious sound. And I learned that from
Milo — how to cut sound. Everything has to be very precise,
very professional. And everyone was amazed at the very
professional way in which the film was put together.

We made complete charts. Most people coming down to the
studio have charts practically made on toilet paper, but I
consider it to be very important because I have so much, may-
be too much, respect for the so-called professionals you
deal with. I found in fact that many of them barely have a
clue. And I was brought up in the tradition of Czech films
and how they make them. I had to have very definite organ-
ization, very much into cleanliness when you’re handling your
material, you know. Everything’s clean. And in the end it’s
very important.

How do you live?

I drive a cab a couple of days a week. It’s not a bad job,
you know. Because you can work a few days, and you can
make good bucks, if you work pretty hard at it. The hours can
get pretty long. There’s a whole street scene, you know, and
that’s kind of fun.

What I like about these people (his cab company) is when I
told them what happened in Cannes, they wouldn’t believe me.
I told my boss, and he said ‘“‘Anyone who drives a cab doesn’t
do things like that. Why would you want to fool me? Do you
think I’m stupid or something?”’ Then he said, ‘‘What’s the
name of this film anyway?” and I said Metamorphosis, and
he said, ‘‘Metawhosafis? ?’’ 0

June-July 1976/31

more important

32/ Cinema Canada

american film festival

than
cannes ?

For filmmakers who don’t aspire to see
their films playing to packed commercial
houses — for the makers of documentaries,
educational films, experimental ones, etc.
— the American Film Festival is of great
importance. Ben Achtenberg, a juror at the
A.F.F. last year, gives us his account of
this year’s festival.

by Ben Achtenberg

Ten the Magic Number by Barrie Nelson

It gets less public attention than almost any other major
festival on the continent, but for Canadian and American
filmmakers trying to sell to the US nontheatrical market,
the American Film Festival in New York can be more im-
portant than Cannes. Sponsored by the Educational Film
Library Association (EFLA), the Festival was organized
to bring filmmakers and distributors together with the
organization’s members, most of whom are film librarians,
school and museum media personnel, and other film
programmers.

Jerry Bruck, who made I.F. Stone’s Weekly, says flatly
that this is the most important festival in the United States
for independents. “A lot of filmmakers look at the entry
form and see that there’s a fee and they feel, ‘What the hell,
they want me to pay to enter my film?’ and there are no big
cash prizes, so they don’t enter. It’s a big mistake. This
festival gives you a chance to meet the people who can really
support independent filmmakers, the librarians and media
people who actually buy and rent film prints.” I.F. Stone’s
Weekly swept the Festival’s major prizes two years ago, and
Bruck feels that has had a good deal to do with the film’s
success in nontheatrical release.

Bruck is one of an increasing number of filmmakers who
have given up on the traditional route of working with com-
mercial distributors and are trying to handle their own
films. He is working on a book about independent distribu-
tion, based on his experience with I.F. Stone. One of his
earlier films, The Old Corner Store Will Be Knocked
Down by the Wreckers, was a finalist this year. It deals
with the unsuccessful fight of people in the Montreal neighbor-
hood where he used to live to save their seventy-year-old
corner store and their community from demolition.

This year more than 750 films — television documentaries,
industrials, scientific, fiction, children’s and curriculum
films and many others that might be hard to define — were
submitted. Pre-screening juries around the country narrow-
ed these down to 377 films in 39 categories.

At the Festival, a second jury screens the films in each
category and awards a blue ribbon to the top-rated film and
a red ribbon to the runner-up. The single highest-rated
film among all the blue ribbon winners is awarded the
Festival’s “Emily”, and its only cash prize, the $500
John Grierson Award, is given to “an outstanding new film-
maker in the social documentary field.” Two years ago
I.F. Stone’s Weekly won the Emily and shared the Grierson
with Lucinda Firestone’s Attica. Last year’s Emily winner
was Jill Godmilow and Judy Collins’ Antonia: a Portrait
of the Woman, and the Grierson Award was won by the
Pacific Street Film Collective’s Frame-Up! The Imprison-
ment of Martin Sostre.

Evaluations of the films entered, as well as special
writeups of the winners, are widely distributed to EFLA
member organizations and have a good deal to do with buy-
ing decisions. One southern librarian at the Festival admitted
that the large regional library he represents buys as many
as 50 percent of its new films on the basis of EFLA re-
commendations, often sight unseen. Blue and red ribbon
winners get additional exposure to purchasers from a year-
long circuit of screenings at libraries around the US.

A good deal of informal persuading also goes on during
the Festival. Distributors rent table space to display
their catalogs and new releases, and the larger ones try
to wine and dine the librarians from the larger institutions

es emer ne SLT Fe een ee ee See Ney
Freelance filmmaker Ben Achtenberg graduated from Harvard Col-
lege and has an M.A. in Communications from the University of
Pennsylvania. He is deeply involved in community organizing and
with media questions. Author of The Cable Book: Community Tele-
vision for Massachusetts, he contributes regularly to tele-
VISIONS. He has also worked in all phases of film production and
has extensive experience in video and photography.

Mr. Frog Went a-Courting by Evelyn Lambart

and lure them up to private suites to screen additional films.
One hustling young independent producer claimed to have
made 10 print sales on the first day of the Festival.

The Winners

This year’s Emily winner was Richard Patterson’s bio-
graphy and tribute to Charlie Chaplin, The Gentleman
Tramp, produced by Bert Schneider. The film includes stills,
newsreel footage, home movies and recently shot material
from Switzerland as well as clips from Chaplin’s greatest
films.

The special jury for the John Grierson Award (Perry
Miller Adato, Madeline Anderson, Arnold Eagle, William
Sloan, Willard Van Dyke, Amos Vogel, and Edith Zornow)
split the prize between Richard Brick’s Last Stand Farm-
er, a documentary on the struggle of a 67-year-old Ver-
mont hill farmer to keep his farm going, and western Mas-
sachusetts filmmaker Dan Keller's Lovejoy’s Nuclear
War.

The film deals with the case of Sam Lovejoy, organic
farmer, who decided he had to do something about the threat
of nuclear power plants. One night in February, 1974, he
went out and loosened the guy wires supporting a 500-foot
weather tower which had been erected in preparation for an

The Bakery by Paul Saltzman

June-July 1976/33

atom plant project in nearby Montague, Mass. The tower
collapsed and Lovejoy turned himself in to police after
issuing a statement explaining his action. His trial, for
“willful and malicious destruction of personal property,”
mobilized community opinion around the power plant issue
and provided the film’s focus.

The film has already been honored as the best political
film in the 1975 San Francisco International Film Festival
and is one of three films representing the US at the Berlin
Film Festival. Another kind of testimonial to its effective-
ness came when the Atomic Industrial Forum, lobbying
front for a consortium of nuclear utility companies, singled
it out for attack. Earlier this year the AIF circulated a me-
mo to its members and supporters calling for ‘‘a nuclear
acceptance campaign which will be geared to motivate and
persuade the public to observe the positive values of nuclear
energy and its safe use.”’

The anti-nuclear movement, complains the memo, “‘warns
of invisible killers and pending catastrophe. It also advocates
property destruction and sabotage as in Lovejoy’s Nu-
clear War, a film which has been shown to thousands of
environmental and other activist organizations across the
country.’’ According to Keller the AIF has also circulated
material attacking the film to schools and other potential
users of the film; nonetheless, he estimates the film has
already been seen by at least half a million people.

Mr. Symbol Man by Bruce Moir and Bob Kingsbury

34/ Cinema Canada

Canadian Entries

As usual, many of the Canadian entries in the Festival
were National Film Board productions, and the NFB’s anima-
tors fared the best in the prize competitions. Evelyn Lam-
bart’s animated version of The Story of Christmas, which
is complemented by a music track performed on Renais-
sance instruments, was the blue ribbon winner in the Reli-
gion and Society category. The Film Board’s other blue
ribbon entry, The Light Fantastic, is a retrospective look
at the development of animation at the NFB which focuses
on Lambart as well as Norman McLaren, Lotte Reineger
and Ryan Larkin. Another Evelyn Lambart film, Mr. Frog
Went a-Courting, was also a Festival finalist.

Michael Rubbo’s Waiting for Fidel — about his visit to
Cuba with millionaire businessman Geoff Stirling and former
Newfoundland Premier Joey Smallwood — won the red
ribbon for films on ‘World Concerns.” His I Am an Old
Tree, also about Cuba and the changes its people have under-
gone since the revolution, was a finalist in the same category.
Waiting for Fidel has already received fairly wide distribu-
tion and a good reception in the US. Bate’s Car, a film by
Rubbo about a guy who has solved his personal fuel shortage
by converting barnyard manure into methane gas, was another
Festival finalist.

Waiting for Fidel, starring Joey Smallwood

Red ribbon winner for environmental films was Dorothy
Todd Hénaut’s Challenge for Change film The New AIl-
chemists, which documents the efforts of a group of Cana-
dians and Americans living on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to
establish an environmentally sound ecosystem for producing
vegetables, fish’ and meat using only organic fertilizers and
only solar and wind power as energy sources.

Red ribbon winner Whistling Smith was also nominated
for an Academy Award in 1975. Directed by Michael Scott
and Marrin Cannel for the NFB, it’s about a tough cop who
claims to have cut crime in half on his Vancouver beat —
though perhaps only by terrorizing the prostitutes, junkies
and other street people into moving to the next block. A
finalist in the same category was Paul Saltzman’s inde-
pendently produced The Bakery, on the Perlmutar family’s
bakery in Toronto’s Kensington Market. Saltzman’s film,
Indira Gandhi: a Heritage of Power, which includes inter-
views with the Indian leader filmed in the summer of 1975,
was the red ribbon-winning International Affairs film.

The red ribbon film in the ‘‘Human Sexuality” category
was Making It, directed by Pat Corbett and produced and
written by John Churchill. And They Lived Happily Ever
After, made by Kathleen Shannon for the NFB, was a finalist
in the same category.

Other Film Board productions among the Festival finalists
included Ten the Magic Number, an animated introduction
to the metric system by Barrie Nelson; Walk Awhile...
in My Shoes, by Nimbus Films Ltd. for the NFB, on the

problems of the handicapped in public buildings and on
public transportation; The Child, Part I: Jamie, Ethan,
Marlon — the First Two Months, by Robert Humble; Mr.
Symbol Man, by Bruce Moir and Bob Kingsbury; and
Smoking/Emphysema: A Fight for Breath.

Additional Canadian finalists included Pen Densham and
John Watson’s Reflections on Violence in the Media:
Douglas Sinclair's Cross-Country Ski Techniques; Peter
Rowe’s Horse Latitudes; and CBC Toronto’s Young and
Just Beginning, by Mark Irwin and Ruth Hope, on Olympic
gymnast Elfi Schlegel.

In addition to the films in competition, Ishu Patel’s
Perspectrum was chosen for inclusion in the special, out-
of-competition ‘Film as Art” screening.

**Foreign Propaganda’’

One of the topics of corridor conversation at the Festival
was the recent attack by the US Justice Department against
Tricontinental Film Center, a major distributor of films
from Third World countries. Tricontinental has been order-
ed to register as a “foreign agent,’”’ and label its films and
publicity as ‘foreign politicial propaganda.” The group
would also have to report all film sales and rentals to the
Justice Department within 48 hours and turn in the names
and addresses of its customers to the government.

As a statement issued by the EFLA Board noted, “The
effect would be to discourage the viewing of their films be-
cause many individuals and groups would be reluctant to
rent a film if they knew that their names would be supplied
to a government agency as a result. The loss of customers
and the cost of complying with regulations would soon force
Tricontinental out of business and the education community
would lose a valuable resource.”

“We are also concerned,” it went on, “that this tactic
may be applied to other distributors of foreign films with
the ultimate result being the suppression of points of view
with which the Justice Department disagrees.”

While the Justice Department has declined to specify
exactly what foreign government Tricontinental is supposed
to register as an agent of, most observers feel sure the
move is aimed at Cuban films and is part of the Ford/
Kissinger administration’s efforts to put pressure on Cuba.
Among the Cuban films the company handles are Lucia
and Memories of Underdevelopment, which The New York
Times called one of the 10 best films of 1973. Tricontinental
also distributes films from other Latin American countries,
Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, as well as from
the United States.

Some Suggestions for Festival entrants

Several years’ experience with EFLA pre-screening and
Festival juries suggest a few points that may be useful for
filmmakers planning to enter the American Film Festival.

It’s worth mentioning first that a large proportion of the
films are submitted by distributors rather than directly by
the filmmaker. If the film has already been placed with a
US distributor, the filmmaker may need to do no more than
make sure the distributor plans to submit it.

Filmmakers entering their own works should fill out the
entry forms with some care. For example, entrants are
asked to specify the audience for which the film is intended
and its purpose. Jurors are asked, among other things, to
evaluate how well the film accomplishes the stated purpose.
Some jurors take this very seriously, and it can cost points
if an entrant has proclaimed excessively grandiose goals
and fails to deliver. A film about a group of old people might
be more accurately, and more safely, described as intended
“to increase awareness of the problems of the elderly,”
than “to clarify and illuminate the human predicament.”’
(An actual example, slightly changed to protect the embar-

rassed.) No matter how insulting it may seem to be asked
to put into a couple of lines what may have taken a year or
more to achieve, this question should be taken seriously.

A film can also be hurt by being judged in an inappropriate
category. Unfortunately for the filmmaker, the increase in
entries has resulted in a proliferation of vague and similar-
sounding categories, which makes it hard to figure out what
is the best category to enter in, especially for the type of
films broadly describable as social documentary.

The only real solution is to read the guidelines carefully
and look over past Festival catalogs and winner lists to see
what films have done well where. Looking at past Festival
reports will also reveal the fact that some juries have shown
consistent tendencies toward particular types of films or
even political slants. While there is no guarantee that such
tendencies will continue, they are worth taking into considera-
tion. Catalogs and information on past and future Festivals
should be available through any local EFLA member library
or from Educational Film Library Association, 17 West
60th Street, New York, New York 10023. O

STARTING
SEPTEMBER
76!

1500 PAPINEAU — 527-4521

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— 878-9562

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BIGGER AND BETTER

June-July 1976/35

Re ee

36/ Cinema Canada

agin

three viewpoints on

the grierson
seminar

by Natalie Edwards, Ronald H. Blumer,

and Gary Evans

The Grierson Seminars attract those film-
makers who make documentaries, the films
for which Canada is best known, and the
buyers of those films, film librarians for
the most part. Below are three differing
points of view on the goings-on in Couchich-
ing.

(US ee ies commer SE

Propaganda peti NFB-produced federal pro aganda —

IE MER MMR i
on Ser See ree ee .
haste bo SS.

To Enter the World at a Different Level

by Natalie Edwards

The second annual Grierson Seminar was held at Lake
Couchiching, at the YMCA Conference Centre, Geneva Park,
near Orillia, Ontario, in the clear bright days between
April 3 and 7, 1976.

Erik Barnouw, former Columbia University professor
and now a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, opened the session with
a speech on the purpose of communication, in which he
spoke of the hidden effectiveness of fiction in propagandiz-
ing compared to the visibility of documentary persuasion.
He made the point that TV fiction stories, and films, offer
the public certain positive solutions to problems, mainly
explicit and violent, whereas documentary work often raises
questions that have yet to be answered. Fiction therefore
seems to “make sense” while news and various informa-
tion programs seem fragmented by comparison.

Paul Rotha and Basil Wright, as well as Allan King, help-
ed chair the various talk sessions that followed the showing
of each film.

At the end I asked chairman Wayne Cunningham what the
Ontario Film Association had hoped to achieve.

“Increasing interest in documentary film,” he replied.

“And do you think you were successful?” I asked.

He smiled. He certainly did. However, he added, ‘‘there
were things (films) that Grierson wouldn’t have allowed,
but we hoped people would raise that issue, and in a round-
about way, discover what a Griersonian film was. However,
other discussions displaced it, more meaningful to the
participants, and that is also one of Grierson’s ideas.”

The 27-year-old Ontario Federation of Film Councils
became the Ontario Film Association in 1958. The people
who planned and executed this smoothly run seminar gave
not only an incredible amount of time and energy, but
actually used their vacation time: Wayne Cunningham, John
Crang, Chris Worsnop, Marie B. Deane and Bob Wylie.
Grants from the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts
Council helped to bring in the filmmakers, while the Ontario
Film Association paid for everything else.

At the end of the seminar, Basil Wright, speaking of

Grierson, described him as a “perpetually self-renewing
person who would no doubt shock us, were he alive today
and in this room, by telling us what a lot of nonsense we’ve
been talking.”
Now, while I’m no expert on Geierson, I always had the
impression the man was exciting, adventuresome and inno-
vative, if irascible. Because of this it was a disappointment
to see so many old-fashioned documentaries with what I
call the National-Geographic Approach: we look, we see, we
comment.

Narrative voice-overs, descriptions, maps, and many
views of something or someplace, do indeed educate us
geographically and visually. But these methods have not
taught us love and understanding. They provide a Zoo
Approach. The most disgusting (to us) scenes have a novelty
and satisfy voyeuristic curiosity: a dead body floating down
the Ganges; a woman crazed with religious fervor, devouring

a live bird’s head. In a sensitively illuminated context we
not only could become compassionate but even be brought to
imagine ourselves in the place of other people — seeing,
for instance, the floating body as part of an acceptable way
of life, understanding its presence, or witnessing the
religious ecstasy as a marvellous release of inhibition and
a connection with ancient rites in a sacred world; feeling,.
rather than solely observing, the meaning of what we see.

But how is this to be done? How can documentary film
advance from the habit of factual and educational third-
person observation and help us to enter the world at a
different level; to see other lives and other ways of living
with humility and love and true understanding? This is one
of the things I hoped to find explored at the Grierson
Seminar. To my mind, one bridge is the type of Imaginary
Documentary best represented by a film like Montreal Main,
in which real people extend the events of their own lives
into a dramatic projection of various possibilities. But
there was nothing of this type at the Seminar, although
Kathleen Shannon’s personal self-discovery trip Goldwood,
at least let us enter another’s life at a very close and
personal level.

The Grierson Seminar attempts a great deal. In honoring
Grierson and the documentary, it hopes to show the kind of
film he made, and follow the precepts he set out. But one
of these was for change, exploration and discovery. So in
fact, as well as adhering to the past, the Seminar, to be
true to Grierson, really must investigate the novel and the
new, and if possible introduce attitudes and methods that
are almost revolutionary.

Further, the Seminar hopes to increase interest in the
documentary through expanded use of that form. Thus
librarians, school board buyers, and those with a dollar to
spend and a potential audience, are encouraged to attend
and comment. They generally prefer material prepared,
like texts, on the models of the past. However, people like
me and some of the filmmakers and professors want to see
what new forms can replace the old, and to discuss the use
of the medium in a direct sense, the manipulation of
thought and reaction through cutting, angles, composition,
placement of material, point of view. Finally, certain con-
cerned people also feel that just learning the facts is a
dead end to bridging the gap between peoples and places.
A method of involving the heart is sought.

Thus, among the 97 people present, there was a good deal

_ of conflict about what could and what should be discussed.

Sometimes groups clamored for a deeper discussion on
copyright or on “film” quotations, sometimes on sales or
distribution, sometimes on technique, and always, there
were those who tried to dissuade the group from concentrat-
ing on content.

As for me, my longing to delve into the subject of inte-
grity was lost from view. The basic unities that we must
require in order to accept the material a documentary film-
maker offers us were never really discussed, let alone
settled. Oo

June-July 1976/37

The Activist Film :

Alive and Kicking

by Ronald H. Blumer

Film conferences tend to be ordeals of the mind, body,
spirit, eyeballs, and that particular little spot between the
ass and the base of the back where our tails would be, were
it not for evolution. The second annual Grierson Seminar
was no exception; a dedicated gathering of those rare birds
actually interested in both seeing and making documentaries.
The congregation meets each year at the Lake Geneva con-
ference center, a Disneyland version of the wilderness with
paved nature walks and trees with labels on them. The
squirrels are real, though, and so are the movies, unreel-
ing at a relentless pace from 8:45 in the morning until 11
at night. One comes away from such a barrage with nibbl-
ed fingers and mixed impressions.

One immediate conclusion is that we are a very talented
country. Of the 30 or so films presented, many made
under difficult conditions with shoestring budgets, a high
proportion were excellent. There is, however, the sad
feeling that here among the lakes and plastic flowers is
the one and only time that many of these films are ever
going to be seen in public. Filmmaker after filmmaker
stood up in front of the audience to tell their tale of dis-
tribution woe. The main blight seems to be television —
particularly CBC, which had rejected almost every good
independently made film presented at the conference.
Story after story was told of how some young filmmaker
was ground up by the Byzantine monolith which nightly fills
our airwaves with mediocrity. Coupled with similar stories
coming from last year’s conference, it is becoming obvious
that Canadian television is terrible not because of a lack of
talent, but because the institution is closed and hostile to
talent; particularly if it comes in from outside the deadwood
of Jarvis Street.

On the bright side of the screen are the film libraries,
well represented at this conference. For independent film-
makers they offer one of the few alternate distribution net-
works by which the films produced can get to a larger public.
The power of the Grierson Seminars is that they are not
only a forum where filmmakers are brought together to lock
antlers but where filmmakers are brought together with
film users. And many potentially valuable lessons can be
learned on both sides. For example, the word “useful”? kept
popping up. A critically indifferent film was considered by
the librarians to have a certain audience appeal, or be use-
ful in this or that context in conjunction with this or that
film. Thus, for the filmmakers, the whole wonderful link
between film and public was made manifest. Films are
made, after all, to be seen, and it is the seeing that makes
the films; many cinéastes descend from the clouds on the
basis of that simple homily. The strength of the conference
also tended to be its weakness. Filmmakers tend to be a

Ronald H. Blumer is currently an instructor in cinema at Vanier
College in Montreal. Prior to this he taught at Marianopolis Col-
lege and was a teaching assistant at McGill University and Boston
University. Concurrent with teaching, he has also been working on a
series of films on aging.

38/ Cinema Canada

noisy, pushy, ego-bound lot and while over half of the 80
delegates were film librarians, they tended to be the silent
half quietly alternating between frustration and anger. It
seems like a simple problem of organization to bring these
two groups together in an atmosphere conducive to pleasant
and not-so-pleasant interchange. The grueling pace of the
conference and the large, cold screening room seemed to
mean that only the loudmouths got the spotlight, to the de-
triment of all.

The films shown, and there were many, presented a
fascinating perspective of documentary film production, past
and present. The documentary movement of the ’30s was
represented in the flesh by pioneers like Willard Van Dyke,
Paul Rotha and Basil Wright. The films from that era
present a world in which man is pitted against nature and
filled with hope that technology is the key to future happi-

Chief Dan George in Cold Journey

ness and prosperity. In one film, for example, we have
scenes of happy natives in Siam washing their troubles away
with DDT soap. The contemporary films presented an op-
posing view of a world only too aware of the limitations of
technology. For this reason, many films of the mid-’70s
appear at first glance to be very anti. Allan Goldstein’s
A Matter of Choice (Cinema Canada, no. 26) presents the
case against nuclear energy, Martin Defalco’s Cold Journey
and Tony Ianuzielo’s Cree Hunters of Mistassini (Cinema
Canada, no. 24) strongly indict our destruction of the In-
dian’s way of life in the name of progress, Blaine Allan’s
There Goes the Neighbourhood presents the case against
unlimited urban expansion and Karl Shiftman’s Holy Ganges
praises the spiritual world of materially impoverished In-
dia. If blind faith in progress seems to characterize the
documentaries of the ’30s and °40s, a feeling of guilt seems
to run through the films of the mid-’70s — a guilt at what
we have done in the name of this progress. In Jerry Bruck’s
I.F. Stone’s Weekly, the veteran newsman presents the
American defeat in Vietnam as a victory for man over
technology. In other films presented at the conference, we
are asked to feel guilty about what has happened in Chile,
what has happened to the native people, what we have done
to minority groups or women, and how we have messed up
the environment. In many ways, the guilt presented in these
films is an impotent guilt — an easy way out, a confession so
we can keep on doing more of the same. If this were the only
message we get from a four-day sampling of present-day
documentary film , we might as well forget about the mess

and leap into the soothing arms of The Partridge Family.
All is not one long moan, however, and many of these
same films try to connect the guilt they generate to some
form of action. A Matter of Choice deliberately chooses
against the use of experts, it is the mothers with babies in
their arms who are taking on the power and mining com-
panies. The message of the film strongly points to the fact
that we have left things up to the “‘experts’”’ for long enough
and now it is the power and responsibility of ordinary people
to do something about it. Creating Space, a film about a
Toronto artists’ co-op, provides a model for all those wish-
ing to break down the alienation between business, work
and everyday living. There Goes the Neighbourhood is a film
specifically designed for citizen groups and shows how
slum houses can be made livable at relatively low cost.
Cold Journey and Potlatch (Cinema Canada no. 21) are not
only about Indians, but are films used by Indians as organ-
izing tools. Susan Schouten’s The Working Class on Film
(Cinema Canada no. 27) can be said to have summed up
the conference. The film has as its thesis the idea that docu-
mentary started under Grierson as a way in which working
people could have a respectable screen image of them-
selves. The movement has since evolved from a mirror
to a hammer, a tool with which people can reshape their
own lives. This activist film tradition is very strong in
Canada, resulting in the production of many films with a
purpose, beyond observation and beyond entertainment.
The second Grierson Seminar clearly showed that this
tradition is still with us — alive and kicking. oO

No Significant Attempt to Explore

by Gary Evans

Propaganda is one of those words which when heard
causes an almost Pavlovian reaction — more often than
not, a negative response. To many, the word implies
a situation where the individual is treated as one of
the mass who is being preached to — or, more coarse-
ly, brainwashed by a higher, remote and often antag-
onistic authority. Curiously, the word originated from
a 17th century papal order, the congregatio de propa-
gande fide, whose members were sent on missions to
recruit actively for the Catholic Church. As missiona-
ries, it was their responsibility to win converts and
to promote the faith.

In the first four decades of this century, propaganda
was a device used by governments to promote the
merits of each of their respective systems to win the
hearts and minds of a besieged citizenry, especially
in time of war or crisis. Thus in Britain during the
First World War, the Ministry of Propaganda under
Canadian press lord Max Aitkin (later Lord Beaver-
brook) churned out information which was supposed
to convince allies and neutrals that Axis information
was incorrect if not downright dishonest, while the
allied position was ‘true’. This brought out the worst
in all of the participants and following Lord North-

cliffe’s ill-advised press campaigns against the Hun
at the war’s end, the ‘negative manipulation’ label
became identified with propaganda.

By the Second World War, there were those who tried
to rehabilitate the word by dividing propaganda literal-
ly into black and white. Good intentions notwithstand-
ing, propaganda remained a necessary evil during the
war, even though it was directed more for home con-
sumption than for allies or neutrals. Following the
war, with the dawn of the television age, propaganda
acquired the open-ended definition it has today. Sum-
med up recently by communications specialist Erik
Barnouw, “Any communication is propaganda, as it
has purpose, even though this tends to lead to mean-
inglessness because it is so broad.” In reference to
the documentary film versus the fiction film, he has
added that while the non-fiction artist has a spoken
premise and must be obvious in his aims, the fiction
artist is connected to unspoken premises, and hence
functions as more of a propagandist. The ultimate logic
of this stretched definition is that as fiction artists do
not pretend to be propagandists, they are in fact propa-
gandists.

Gary Evans

June-July 1976/39

Had the title of this year’s Grierson Film Seminar been
anything other than ‘“‘Propaganda and the Documentary Film”
the five-day event might have been a little less disappointing.
That is not to say that the conference was a failure; it was
a splendid opportunity to view new non-fiction Canadian
films, to meet the filmmakers and the many documentary
film aficionados. The disappointment was that the seminar
missed its purpose: to present and discuss films from their
propaganda aspect as part of the wider evolution of the
documentary film movement.

Given the etymology of the word propaganda and the open-
ended meaning it has assumed, it became apparent from the
first session of the Grierson Seminar that there was an acute
problem in trying to select films which would apply rational-
ly to that theme. There was no significant attempt to explore
the historical and political evolution of the propaganda film.
Instead, the organizers tried to invoke the spirit of John
Grierson by showing I Remember, I Remember, a testimony
by Grierson in his last years of what the movement he found-
ed was supposedly about; it was in fact, an incomplete state-
ment of the documentary philosophy. For his own peculiar
reasons, Grierson neglected to emphasize the two-pronged
principle of political inspiration and social animation which
lay at the core of the documentary tradition. He chose
instead to concentrate upon the (once secondary) artistic
issues of patterns, form and beauty. This was followed by
the films Industrial Britain and Night Mail, which had the
effect of creating the impression that the documentary move-
ment was a kind of final statement of the 19th century liberal
humanist philosophy; its credo was that despite the natural
alienating feature of modern labor, there was dignity in
labor and in individual effort.

Documentary film was much more than this, especially
when in Britain of the late ’30s it dealt with real social
problems such as inadequate housing and poor nutrition.
Significantly, such films were made by breakaway film
units which left the comfortable milieu of government
sponsorship. The best of the documentary films were
discomforting to authorities, yet they demonstrated how
alternatives and solutions were possibile within the existing
order. Such films were educational and inspiring. They
underscored the importance of collective social action. The
Second World War forced a new set of priorities and propa-
ganda film tended to emphasize the importance of maintain-
ing a united collective will to defeat fascism. Grierson
transplanted the documentary idea to wartime Canada, where
the propaganda films of the National Film Board promised
that victory over fascism would signal the coming of a brave
new world, one based upon internationalism and the end of
national rivalries. Sadly, the dream was decades premature;
Grierson left Canada in 1945 as the government was about
to plunge into two decades of Cold War.

These historical references might have enabled the partici-
pants at the seminar to address themselves to some kind
of context. Instead, documentary film pioneers Paul Rotha,
Willard Van Dyke and Basil Wright were either silent or
pessimistic about the possibilities of adopting the film me-
dium to inspire change or to invoke social purpose. This was
a terrible letdown to those who had seen the films of purpose
these men had made earlier and crueler still to those film-
makers who are trying to carry the ideological torch of the
Grierson documentary tradition.

Despite these less-appealing aspects of the seminar, there
were present filmmakers whose films can be seen as direct
evolutionary descendants from the best of the documentary
tradition. Had their films been screened as a group and not

Gary Evans has written a history of government-sponsored film
propaganda in Canada and Britain, The War For Men’s Minds, to
be published early in 1977.

40/ Cinema Canada

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A Leonard Hutchinson wood-block print from Years of Struggle
interspersed among the ‘artistic’, intellectual, and trave-
logue pot-pourri, the whole seminar would have taken on an
entirely different and probably more controversial charac-
ter. These films deserve special merit for being examples
of propaganda at its best. They were educational, rational,
inspirational and political in the broadest sense of the word.

Ron Blumer’s Beyond Shelter and Allan Goldstein’s A
Matter of Choice dealt with two areas of social concern,
care for the elderly and the dangers implied in the prolifera-
tion of nuclear power plants. Both films presented their
respective factual positions in a matter-of-fact tone. They
excelled most when the people spoke to the issues in their
simple and sometimes humorous way. These films convinced
the viewer that there are many possibilities of non-institu-
tional housing for the elderly and that there is a need to
slow the rate of nuclear power development until more
ecological factors are known and assessed. In Blaine Allan’s
There Goes the Neighborhood, a persuasive case was made
for urban renovation, not urban demolition. The film is meant
to be a primer to citizens’ groups which wish to become
involved in renovating their neighborhoods.

Enemy Alien by Jeannette Lerman and Years of Struggle
by David Fulton and Gloria Montero fit into that aspect of
documentary film which links education to politics. The first
was an almost too softspoken history of the relocation of
the Japanese community of Canada during the Second World
War, placing this sorry aspect of Canadian history into the
context of Canada’s racist attitudes toward its Oriental
population as a whole. The visual impact was heightened by
the use of still photographs collected mainly from Japanese-
Canadian photo albums. The film’s political appeal is all the
more relevant in light of many people’s memories of per-
sonal helplessness which followed the government’s recent
suspension of civil liberties during the 1970 October crisis.
Years of Struggle emphasized one man’s concern for and
record of the unemployed of Depression Canada. The art
work of Leonard Hutchinson, printmaker, captured the despair
and dignity of the working class an they struggled to weather
the Depression. The film was flawed partially by its tendency
to concentrate too much on biography and not enough on the
social significance of the man’s work.

There were two films on propaganda as propaganda. Susan
Schouten’s The Working Class on Film used a style of

presentation reminiscent of Canadian wartirne propaganda
of the ‘40s and was meant to inform filmamakers. of the
importance of keeping alive Grierson’s idea of projecting a
positive image of the working class on the screen. As a piece
of political propaganda par excellence, it seized the Grier-
son philosophy, took a position distinctly to the left of the
mainstream and dared to be controversial. (Unfortunately,
it was the last film screened at the seminar.) Schouten
learned from her years with Grierson t'hat his philosophy
can be welded to today’s reality; the film avoided empty
praise and emphasized that if organized labor engages in
political action, significant reform is pdssible. Jerry Bruck
Jr.’s IF. Stone’s Weekly was a piece. of screen journalism
which dealt with the anti- Vietnam War, propaganda waged by
the crusading journalist I.F. Stone. Like The Selling of the
Pentagon, which also came at a time when the public had
turned at last against the war in Vietnam, Bruck’s film has
been popular with a significant part ‘of the North American
public. They have identified the anti-establishment attitude
of the subject and the filmmaker as, their own. Aware of the
historical limitations of his film, Fsruck has commented on
his own open-ended definition of propaganda, “Propaganda
is what you don’t like. Think abdut that a minute.” Had
Bruck’s film surfaced five years before, it would have proba-
bly remained an unknown ‘underground’ propaganda flm.
Five years later it would have been seen as a quaint histori-
cal piece. His film is about propiganda that people did not
like, i.e., the US government’s attempt to sell the war and
as such, it has met with popular success. Equally important,
though, is the film’s affirmation that in a liberal democracy
there are unlimited possibilities for rational change. This
is inspirational propaganda of the first order.

The Challenge For Change group at the National Film
Board has found itself loved and hated alternately for their
belief in social action. In Terniskaming, they have told a
two-part story of the Temiskeiming, Quebec, workers’ victo-
rious struggle to reopen the town’s pulp mill and the depress-
ing letdown of trying to run s'ach an enterprise in the capital-
ist milieu. The film is bot’h inspiring and troubling. The
unanswered questions reflec:t the underlying contradictions
of capitalist production. Alienation of labor will continue
as long as the workers are not the sole proprietors of their
own factories. The film will not be distributed by the CBC
because that organization! feels that the filmmakers were
too sympathetic to the worlxers.

To conclude, had these: films been presented as the core
of the Grierson Seminar, there would have occurred a much
more lively, if heated, event. As the purpose of propaganda
is to force the taking of sides, the exercise might have been
valuable for the particij>ants. But this was only the second
year of the seminar and the organizers are to be com-
mended for their montlas of effort and preparation. In time,
the wrinkles will be worked out. As for suggestions for

future seminars: an ur‘ban centre is preferable so that local |

talent and participation are more available. Personal intima-
cy could be sacrificed for the stimulation which many active
minds could provide -- including the presence of more outside
resources people fam iliar with the Canadian milieu. There
could be different pzinels chosen each day to introduce the
theme of the films aind to comment upon them afterwards.
Such panels might bie composed of non-film people like libra-
rians and teachers, who in many respects reflect the ‘public’
audience more accuirately than do the filmmakers. Finally,
the organizers shovild try operating several theatres simul-
taneously, in whicla films of specific types or genres could
be screened. One cannot help but wonder how much good
Canadian film wais either overlooked or rejected this year
because of consider:ations of time and space. Oo

ae Sa eee a ee es ee ks A
For a capsule comment and distribution information on each of
the films shown at t he Grierson Seminar, please refer to Capsules.

The Grierson Seminar is followed by the Ontario
Film Association’s Showcase of 16 mm films. This is
a major market for distributors of 16 mm film.

The following letter was sent to the organizers
of the two events by Jerry Bruck, director of I. F.
Stone’s Weekly, a filmmaker who has taken the dis-
tribution of his own films in hand.

Last Monday, April 5, a group of about 10 of the
filmmakers attending the Grierson Seminar met to
discuss common problems relating to the distribution
of our films. One of these involved restrictions im-
posed on us by the rules of the Ontario Film Associa-
tion regarding our participation in the annual film
showcase; I was asked to present our feelings to the
OFA board through you.

First, we are grateful that we’ve been permitted
to exhibit our films in Showcase for the first time this
year. Second, we can’t understand why we are not
permitted to be on the premises when our films are
screened.

As you explained the situation, limitations of space
have forced the OFA to limit the numbers of partici-
pating distributors each year. Since our films were
being screened this year in the confines of the Film-
makers’ Showcase, and since we did not require ad-
ditional screening facilities, booths, rooms, meals or
accommodations, we simply wished permission to be
present at Geneva Park in order to:

a) attempt to publicize the scheduled screenings of
our films through handbills and seeking out key libra-
rians;

b) meet key buyers, which we are not otherwise
able to do owing to our limited financial resources;

c) get a sense of other films available to the schools
and library market and a feeling for current tastes.

This would not be possible, if I understood you cor-
rectly, because of the opposition of commercial distri-
butors, who make an important financial contribution
to the annual showcase. All board members we talked
to were extremely deferential to these distributors.

It may or may not prove possible for filmmakers
without experience or contacts in the library market
to achieve much in what I understand is the almost
frenzied atmosphere prevailing at Showcase, but it
seems to me only fair and reasonable that we be
given a chance to participate. Independent filmmaking
is precarious and marginal enough in Canada without
our being barred from an important marketplace. The
high commissions commercial distributors take for
their work make it even more difficult for Canadian-
made films to return their production costs, especial-
ly when commercial distribution provides no guarantee
that a title will be effectively or efficiently marketed.
Growing numbers of filmmakers in the US and Canada
are turning to self-distribution, and we found it up-
setting that we are not permitted to participate on
an equal footing in Canada, as we are permitted to in
all major events in the United States.

In view of the heavy government subsidies required
to maintain even the current low level of independent
production in Canada (as well as much of the work of
the OFA), we feel that any efforts we choose to make
to market our films directly — and hence to bécome
at least in some measure self-sustaining — ought to be
helped, rather than hindered.

Sincerely
Jerry Bruck Jr.
Open Circle Cinema

June-July 1976/41

OT TAWA 76;

SPECIAL EVENTS

INTERNATIONAL
ANIMATION FESTIVAL

a

Centre, Ottawa

The single most important annual
event in international animation, the
International Animation Festival, sanc-
tioned by ASIFA (Association inter-
nationale du film d’animation) will
move to the Western Hemisphere for
the first time this year, as the Cana-
dian Film Institute hosts Ottawa 76.

Ottawa 76 will be held at the Na-
tional Arts Centre from August 10 to
15, and will incorporate the formal
competition of animated films from
around the world, out-of-competition
screenings, major retrospectives, stu-
dent workshops, displays, and a final
evening of awards and screening of

42/ Cinema Canada

g die i,

The final evening of Ottawa 76 will be held in the 2300 - seat Opera at the National Arts

winning entries. Categories for com-
petition will include: films longer than
three minutes, films shorter than three
minutes, promotional films (commer-
cials, public service announcements or
fillers) not exceeding five minutes,
first films by a student or independent
beyond practice works or school ex-
ercises, films for children, and in-
structional films.

It is expected that animators from
all over the world will enter and at-
tend this festival, and that it will
provide an excellent opportunity for
Canadian filmmakers working in this
area to meet and confer with their

The exterior of the National Arts Centre
Ottawa \

?

counterparts from other parts of the
globe.

Assistance and co-operation for Ot-
tawa 76 jis coming from many film-
related bodies including Société Radio-
Canada/C13C, the National Film Board,
the Ciném:aitheque Québécoise, the Na-
tional Film | Archives, and the Festivals
Office of the! Secretary of State.

The final \awards presentation even-
ing will be held on August 15 in the
2300-seat Oprera of the National Arts

Centre, and all winning films will
be shown.
Scheduled (retrospectives will in-

clude the aniination work of the Na-
tional Film Bioard, collage and cut-
out: techniques \up to the present, and
sessions on the} films of Raoul Barré,
a Québécois animator who worked in
Hollywood in tk\e ’20s, and Oskar Fis-
chinger, a pionexer German animator.
The NFB will pr‘esent a display of cels
and animation elements, and a display
of film festival posters is being or-
ganized by the Naitional Film Archives.

There is no entry fee for films in
the festival, but thiey must be shipped
prepaid. Films in | anguages other than
English or French must be subtitled
or dubbed. Films roay be accepted in
16 mm, 35 mm, or 70 mm. Deadline
is July 1, 1976.

For more information on Ottawa 76,
write the Canadian Fiilm Institute, 1105-
75 Albert Street, C'ttawa K1P 5K7,
phone (613) 238-7865,, or telex: FILM-
CAN OTT 053-4250. C)

BOOK REVIEWS

Canadian Feature Films
1964-1969
by Piers Handling

Canadian Filmography Series, number ten.
Canadian Film Institute. 1976. 64 pp. Stiff
paperback, 8'»’’ x 11”’, Illus.

This 64-page, large-format book
(which is both too handsome and too
important to be termed a booklet) is of
immense value as a work of reference
and also offers pleasurable reading to
anyone even casually concerned with
recent Canadian films. It is the
largest of three such _ publications
from the Canadian Film Institute, al-
though covering the shortest period
and, since it is succinct and in no
way overwritten, this fact is a cheer-
ing reminder that our production is in-
creasing by leaps and bounds, even
though, month by month, these move-
ments can seem more like staggers.
(The two previous issues in the series,
both by Peter Morris, covered the pe-
riods 1913-1940 and 1941-1963. They
are still available.)

Piers Handling, of the CFI, has
achieved a magnificent feat of orga-
nizing his material, fusing facts and
comments, erudition and occasional
wry amusement. He gives full credits,
plot synopses, production notes and
critical reaction by himself and others
on over 100 features — defined as run-
ning 60 minutes or more — ranging
from the celebrated, like Nobody
Waved Goodbye, The Luck of Ginger
Coffey and Le viol d’une jeune fille
douce, to the obscure and bizarre.
Something called The Naked Flame
starring Dennis O’Keefe achieved one
showing in Edmonton, we learn, while
Sex and the Lonely Woman, shot in
Uruguay, has Canadian connections
you wouldn’t even dream of. Famous
and forgotten, serious and silly, the
features of a six-year period then un-
paralleled in this country’s film his-
tory are all here, as they should be,
for history is a mixture of the
tremendous and the trivial. At least,
if anything relevant is not here, I
haven’t spotted the omission. Instead,
‘it has been stimulating to check the

Clive Denton writes and broadcasts for the
CBC, doing film reviews for Off Stage
Voices and the Sunday Supplement. For
many years he was the Program Director
for the Ontario Film Theatre and has writ-
ten two books for Pantivy Press, one on
Henry King and one on King Vidor.

CANADIAN FEATURE FILA’
1904-1909

facts I remembered while learning the
things I never knew and rediscovering
what was half-recalled. The pleasure
brought to mind by the artistic suc-

cess of Winter Kept Us Warn, for ex-
ample, and the happy financial “‘res-
cue” of it by a Commonwealth Film
Festival now rather dim in memory
is balanced by a sad question mark
over David Secter’s subsequent ab-
sence from the scene. And not the
least intriguing section of these solid-
ly filled pages concerns the ambitious
and mysterious Roses in December,
by Graham Gordon, a film still un-
finished and unshown after major pro-
duction ten years ago. I would love to
see this if only for the sight of Ge-
rald Pratley acting a priest. (More
seriously, no effort should be so un-
rewarded.)

In addition to the merits I have
tried to suggest, the book has a full
index listing titles, directors, actors,
etc., and several large and attractive
stills. No good public library can be
without it; nor, for that matter, can
‘any good private library which even
nods towards films.

Clive Denton

Six European Directors: Essays
on the Meaning of Film Style

by Peter Harcourt

Penguin Books “‘Pelican” Series, England,
1974. $2.50.

We are indeed fortunate as Cana-
dians to have in Peter Harcourt a
lucid and probing film critic; Six
European Directors is, as well as
being an excellent work of criticism,
above all a textbook on the art of

critical judgement, particularly in the

area of film.

Harcourt opens with a long essay on
criticism, referring to various
schools but concentrating on his own
approach. His lucid statement does
indeed help us to understand the
structure of the six essays to follow
but, more, it assists the reader in
confidently making sense of a film to
which he first responds in a darkened
room, separated from other specta-
tors in his one-to-one relationship
with the images on the screen. As the
spectator emerges from the theatre,
his personal response is_ refined
through discussion and reading of the
critics. Harcourt has built his critical
philosophy on this very natural pat-

tern, giving it strength and direction
by the kinds of critical questions he
suggests, by pointing out that a re-
sponse can and should have reference
to other areas of the viewer’s know-
ledge and by trusting the subconscious
in responding and playing with the
imagery. In short, Harcourt argues
that one’s individual response is a
basis for understanding a film and
this understanding need not be only
on the level of incident which, as he
points out, is often the only level dis-
cussed by many reviewers.

The opening essay is prefaced. with
two quotes — the first from Henry
James holding that the most valued
response to life and art is that which
is true to one’s emotional and private
allegiances; the other krom Leonardo
da Vinci who claims that “one has no
right to love or hate anything if one
has not acquired a thorough know-
ledge of its nature.” Harcourt hopes
that the critic would. try to steer a
critical path between these divergent
poles:

“...We undoubtedly need scholar-
ship to help us understand a given
work of art, to help us to honor
Leonardo’s ideal. But scholarship

June-July 1976/43

BOOK REVIEWS

in the arts is secondary. Response
is primary. The facts that are most
useful to us are those which help us
to answer the questions about a
given film that we are asking our-
selves, questions always related to
those primordial ones: What does
this mean? Why is it affecting me
like this? How does it relate to
other films that I have seen?

“So when discussing films, we
can approach them from two con-
trary directions — the direction of
knowledge and the direction of igno-
rance. Knowledge certainly helps
us more perfectly to understand our
own experiences and may lead us
through the superficialities of an
intellectual curiosity about some-
thing to a deeper, more personal
involvement in it. But generally, it
seems to me, knowledge about a
work of art becomes most meaning-
ful when it follows response, when
it illuminates the instinctive obscu-
rities of a personal involvement.”’
(p. 20-21)

In the six essays which follow,
Harcourt does not betray his critical
philosophy — he does not burden the
reader with his or others’ scholar-
ship, nor with cinematic jargon. Let
me explain Harcourt’s use of scholar-
ship by discussing the first essay,
“The Reality of Sergei Eisenstein’’.

While referring to the enormous
amount of analytical criticism by
Eisenstein and_ others, Harcourt

interprets that torrent of analysis as
an extension of his argument that
scholarship can often obscure (and
perhaps, in the case of Eisenstein,
is meant to obscure) and make the
viewer incapable of having or admit-
ting an emotional response. In look-
ing directly at the films, in- rejecting
that mass of “external clarification’”’
and the generalized statements on
montage that wash the viewing of all

films by Eisenstein and his Russian {
Harcourt has given /

contemporaries,
us' a breath of fresh air on the sub-
ject, concluding that Eisenstein
“remains an enigma — a compelling;
fusion of grand designs with a kind of
human emptiness.”

The prodigious work of the six di-
rectors (besides Eisenstein: Jean Re-
noir, Luis Bunuel, Ingmar Bergrnan,

Eleanor Beattie holds an M.A. from Mc-
Gill where she wrote her thesis or Harold
Pinter’s film scripts and is the jauthor of
Handbook of Canadian Film, the new edi-
tion of which will be available this summer.

44/ Cinema Canada

Federico Fellini and Jean-Luc Go-
dard) presents an enormous task to
the critic and Harcourt has proven
himself more than equal to it. Each
essay covers in a critical way all the
work of the artist; this is not to say
that each film of a specific cineaste
is analyzed in detail although it. is
evident that Harcourt has indeed done
that work in his search for the film-
maker’s ‘‘view of life’’:

“J am trying to do basically
one thing: I am anxious to explain
the form of ‘each director’s films
in terms of the ‘view of life’ that
has necessita:ted it...I tend thus to
concentrate on the films where I
feel the director has been most suc-
cessful in_ resolving his artistic
problems... Any breakdown in the
form of ‘his films is inextricably
tied to inadequacies within the view
of life at t-he base of them.”’ (p. 198)
What we have then are a series of

critically precise and brief (consider-
ing the area covered) essays which
can be read separately but maintain
a coherence through critical structure
and point of view. In this, Harcourt’s
“Conclusion” is helpful in seeing the
six directors within a general rela-
lations hip in the European setting.

The footnotes are excellent and sug-
gest, ‘of course, further reading. This
is a terrific book for any formal or
informal student of film, an optimistic
work which insists that good criticism
is possible for all lovers of the cine-
ma: Peter Harcourt is generously as-!
sist ing us in that process.

Eleanor Beattie
GES] (EPR RAY ST A

‘Canadian Federation of Film Socie-

ties Index of 16 mm and 35 mm
Feature-Length Films Available in
Canada 1976

ISSN 0316-5019. Available through P.O.
Box 484, Terminal A, Toronto, Ontario
M5W 1E4. $27.50 (prepaid $25.00).

Although the Canadian Federation
of Film Societies was involved in the
production of an index of feature film
availability in this country as early
as 1947, publication was sporadic and
there were long periods of hiberna-
tion. However, in the late 1960s, three
members of the Toronto Film Society
banded together with a former TFS
officer to investigate the possibility
of using computer technology to re-
sume publication. Under the joint

sponsorship of TFS and the CFFS,
and with some very temporary financ-
ing from the former to cover printing
costs, the first issue was published
in 1970.

As a goodly number of Canadian
film societies are located in smaller
centres, remote from the offices of
the many Canadian distributors handl-
ing specialized films, the Index met
with a good response from the groups
affiliated with the CFFS. However,
there being absolutely no other com-
parable reference to feature film
availability in Canada, it met with
even greater demand from libraries,
audiovisual departments of education-
al organizations, and even film dis-
tributors themselves, who wished to
know what their competitors were
handling. An up-dated publication was
brought out in 1973, and since then the
publication has appeared annually,
while coverage has been widened to
include listings in 35 mm as well as
16mm.

In the 255 pages of its main section,
the 1975 edition lists 8,919 titles of
feature films and long documentaries,
distributed by 45 organizations whose
addresses and telephone numbers are
listed in the front pages. This issue
also included, for the first time, a
35-page listing of titles by director,
and just under a hundred pages of
listings under names of featured play-
ers.

All entries are listed in computer-
ized alphabetical order by title in the
original language, with all non-Eng-
lish titles being cross-referenced to
alternate titles. Following the film
title, and any alternate listings, each
entry contains such information as
year of release, country where pro-
duced, original language, original
ratio, color or b/w, original running
time, director and featured players.
This is followed by information for
each print version, listing distributor,
running time, language version, color,
etc. Where the 1975 listing includes a
change from the previous edition (in-
cluding a change in the alphabetical
order of listing) this is marked by an
asterisk opposite the title, while ad-
ditions are indicated with a plus sign.

Some purists of the print media
have been heard to mutter criticism

TT

A graduate of Queen’s University, Douglas
S. Wilson was for almost two decades the
editor of a Canadian business publication
and has, since 1968, been treasurer and
membership director of Toronto Film So-
clety.

Se ee RSI,

of the book’s format, in that rather
than being typeset, it is lithographed
from computer print-out data. This
format is, however, the essential
factor in making possible an unsub-
sidized price of $25 ($20 to CFFS
members for their first copy) and
with the photo-reduction ratio having
been well chosen, the entries are fully
legible.

A number of further innovations are
included in the new edition which will
shortly be coming off the presses. On
the editorial side, there will be a
third supplement added to the listings
by director and featured players, list-
ing all firms handled by each distrib-
utor. In addition, there is to be cross-
referencing between 16 mm and 35 mm
versions, which in many instances
have different distributors.

A further editorial innovation is the
provision of a French introduction, in-
cluding a key to the symbols and ab-
breviations used in the listings for
each title, while on the commercial
side, advertising by distributors will

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now be included. The bilingualization
should greatly expand the market for
the Index in Quebec and thus permit
economies of scale; combined with
the additional revenue from advertis-
ing, the Index Committee should be
able to provide even further value for
the $25 price.

Every reviewer must have his quib-
ble, and this one would point out a few
discrepancies in spelling and between
subject and verb on the introductory
page of the 1975 edition, where a little
more editorial checking would have
paid dividends. Other print purists
have complained that the listings are
in a computer’s idea of correct al-
phabetical sequence — as a result of
which, it is claimed, some searchers
have missed listings actually in the
volume, but not in the alphabetical
order commonly employed in making
up an index.

These, however, are mere specks
on the total picture, which is that of
a very commendable achievement,
and in any event, they are unlikely to

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BOOK REVIEWS

apply to the 1976 edition, for which
the introduction has been completely
rewritten. Thus, without qualification,
it can be stated that the CFFS Index
is an essential tool for everyone in-
volved in film programming, whether
it be for a film society, courses in
film studios or operating a repertory
cinema, and the $25 cost is money
well spent.

Tribute should also be paid to those
responsible: Arne Ljungstrém, who
handled administration; Pat Thomp-
son for innumerable calls on film
distributors researching the _ titles
they had available, and Austin Whitten
for the computer programming. In
previous years, Aideen Whitten was
responsible for data entry but for the
upcoming issue, this has been handl-
ed by the administrator and program-
mer, considerably increasing their
workload. All in all, despite these
quibbles from a one-time editor in the
print medium, a very _ professional
job.

Douglas S. Wilson

If your principal work is motion
pictures, then you need the
Spectra Professional. The
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June-July 1976/45

FILIV] REVIEWS

Don Taylor’s

Echoes
of a Summer

d: Don Taylor, se: Robert L. Joseph, ph:
John Coquillon, ed: Michael F. Anderson,

sd: Richard Lightstone, a.d: Jack Mc-

Adams, m: Terry James, original theme
Richard Harris, cost: Ton Talsky, ward-
robe: Denis Sperdouklis, l.p.: Richard Har-
ris (Eugene), Lois Nettleton (Ruth), Jodie
Foster (Deirdre), Geraldine Fitzgerald (Sa-
ra), exec. p: Sandy Howard, Richard Har-
ris, assoc. p: Dermot Harris, Muriel Bra-
dley, p. man Michael S. Glick, 35 mm East-
mancolor, running time 99 minutes.

There is a seed of an idea dropped
into the script of Echoes of a Sum-
mer about the middle when we are
desperately trying to fix our attention
in this story. The director, Don Tay-
lor, caught it for a moment, then
dropped it; the author, Robert Jo-
seph, played hide-and-seek with it to
the end of the film.

The “idea” has to do with a young
girl, who knows she is close to death,
feeling cheated because she will
never get old, because she will never
make love and because the fantasies
of her childhood will never be tested
against life. Perhaps not original in
itself, but Echoes of a Summer need-
ed some strong element to tie the
film together and to bring an authen-
ticity to the emotions portrayed in it.

In one sharp yet poignant scene, 12-
year-old Deirdre (Jodie Foster) is
caught unawares playing in her castle.
When she turns we see that Deirdre
has made up her face to look pale,
wrinkled and old.

Later, on the beach with her 10-
year-old friend Phillip (Brad Savage),
she asks him to lie down beside her
so she can get the feel of a man
close to her. If neither actor quite
musters the proper mix of awkward
eagerness for the. scene, we let it
pass because there is a deep well of
meaning to their clumsiness.

However, these two scenes are
isolated high points in a film story
which is more concerned with the
tensions and misdirected concern of
the parents of the dying chiild.

Her parents have gone into debt
to buy a big white house with a ve-

46/ Cinema Canada

The unhappy family in Echoes of a Summer

randa: overlooking the Nova Scotia
seashore to make Deirdre’s end a
little easier. The three of them and
a governess, in unfamiliar surround-
ings and completely isolated, can
neither cover up the horror of the im-
pending death nor attempt some sem-
blance of normal life. They are wait-
ing, playing games while they wait,

but waiting.
Deirdre is the one who faces the
situation squarely, even making

rather osé jokes about it. Her mother
(Lois Nettleton) is still looking for
some last ray of hope among the
many heart specialists she has con-
sulted. Father (Richard Harris) is
lost in a fantasy world he shares
with his daughter.

My gosh, but Richard Harris is
stiff and glum in this film. An actor
with considerable physical presence,
he somehow lacks the emotional
wherewithal to give depth to this role.

The fault lies, in part, with a script
which is merely wordy when it at-
tempts wit, and is overly punctuated
with lines calculated to pull at the
heart strings.

One suspects Jodie Foster felt
more comfortable as the whore in
Taxi Driver than she did in this
pity role. With lines like “I miss
you already, Daddy’, even someone
more cuddly than Jodie would have
trouble convincing us.

Echoes of a Summer is an emotion-
al grab bag. It builds a case on de-

spair, then turns to champion the
happy ending; well, a relatively happy

ending... Deirdre’s courage forcing
her parents to come to “peace” with
their loss.

Though this film is frustrating to
an extreme both for the inadequacies
of script and presentation, it is the
kind of film that develops a follow-
ing. A following among people who
are looking for an antidote to what
is perceived as a frenzy and emotion-
al sterility in the society they live
in and in their own lives. Many of
these people will go home satisfied
with Echoes of a Summer and its
message of conciliation.

If ] am sour on this film it is not
because it is a melodrama but because
the actors in it, perhaps with the ex-
ception of Brad Savage, don’t give
any indication that they believe in the
script. It seems to me that is im-
portant when a film is fishing for
emotions.

I would be willing to make a case
in defense of melodrama for the de-
velopment of the Canadian film in-
dustry as a whole. Our filmmakers
cannot all afford’ to be les artistes!
Echoes of a Summer, however, never
departs from the ruts of the genre
and, to set things straight, it is an
American film shot in Nova Scotia
with some locals on the crew and
the “participation” investment of
Astral Films, in Montreal.

Joan Irving

REVIEWS

OF SHORT FILMS

Enemy Alien

d: Jeanette Lerman, commentary: Stanley
Jackson, Jeanette Lerman, narration: Stan-
ley -Jackson, ph: Eugene Boyco, c.s.c.,
animation ph: Raymond Dumas, Simon Le-
blanc, sd. ed: John Knight, sd. ree.: Jean-
Pierre Joutel, m: Eldon Rathburn, Shaku-
hachi played by Takeo Yamashiro, con-
sultants: Michiko Sakata, Roy Shin, David
Suzuki, exec. p.: Wolf Koenig, p.c.: National
Film Board of Canada, 1976, 35 mm, color
and black and white, running time: 26 mi-
nutes 49 seconds, dist: N.F.B.

Racism is something that only
happens in other countries. As Cana-
dians, we deplore events that occurred
in Nazi Germany, we are indignant
about the Southern United States and
righteous about Rhodesia. It can’t
happen here, we smugly conclude
from our comfortable pews, forgetting
that, in fact, it can and did. The story
of 23,000 Japanese-Canadians and
what happened to them during the
second world war is a black stain on
the Canadian psyche, a record of
cruel injustice so unpleasant to re-
call, that perhaps it is best to let
bygones be bygones. But Enemy Alien
does not let us off easily; through its
quiet words and quiet images, it is a
film which stirs the conscience and
moves us to question the very basis
on which our country was founded.

At the turn of the century, Canada
was flooded with immigrants. In many
parts of the country, the need for
manpower was so acute that immigra-
tion was actively solicited. We saw
the Orient as a source of cheap labor
for the railroad and budding logging
and mining industries. Exploitation
was a matter of official policy; by
law, Orientals were paid a daily wage
one half that of white workers. Great-
ly needed, but not wanted, they were
made to feel unwelcome in many
ways. They were forced to live in
ghettos, barred from voting and ex-
cluded from the professions — and
occasionally, the good burgers of
Vancouver would foray into China-
town to smash up their shops and
businesses. As the years went by this
racism became ingrained and _ the

Orientals were driven more and more.

into their own world. Pearl Harbor
provided the opportunity to turn pub-
lic intolerance into official policy and
within days of the start of hostilities
the full fury of Canada was turned
against its innocent citizens of Japa-
nese origin. Identity cards, confisca-
tion of property, detention camps and,
finally, forced deportation were car-
ried out with a thorough determina-
tion worthy of Nazi Germany. Enemy
Alien clearly shows that these harsh
measures carried out under the War
Measures Act had nothing to do with
military security. The proof was that
when the war and the hysteria was
over there had been no plots, no
spies, not one single act of disloyalty
on the part of these Japanese-Cana-
dians. All that remained were the
broken families and shattered lives,
and the smug Liberal politicians who
carried out these policies in the name
of their loyal constituents. It took
until 1949 before Japanese-Canadians
were finally given the vote — dispers-
ed across the country, they remain
with us, a battered, quiet minority
still wondering why they were singled
out; what in fact they had done.

How does a film deal with such
powerful material? How does it fight
against our natural desire to deny and
forget? Alain Resnais’ short film on
German death camps, Night and Fog,
uses color and a moving camera to
make us question the nature of human
memory. Donald Brittain’s Memo-
randum, on the same subject, con-
trasts past horrors with present-day
normality in Germany using a matter-
of-fact commentary to remind us that
evil is not only banal, but universal.
In Enemy Alien, Jeanette Lerman
uses similar techniques. The story
is told with documentary footage and
newspaper clippings of the times,
present-day films of what is left of
the detention camps, but primarily,
we have the photographs taken from
the scrapbooks of the Japanese them-
selves. Curiously, there are no _ in-
terviews in the film and because of
this, the photographs really do stand
out — the frozen moments, silent en-
capsulations of the past. The strong
but low-key narration for the film
was written and spoken by Stanley
Jackson. It is typical NFB commen-
tary in the sense of being cerebral

FIL ~=REVIEWS

4 © fram
; They veg oa
hegin
‘ac. Japanese

* MAY PREJUDICE PUFURE jects.”
1 noon whe. nat tales athe OR

beeen eat
provising: tor the

itested Yo tefors the Suprome €
ARUAKY oe

{ neaasee to express: opie 3
Jon dhe statement af the BL.
{Security Commission Frid
& pugiewar xesettliement of sh
j ancse ontil further details of |

‘miost provinces. ~ :
Quekee is the only provine

so far te have refused admittance

‘te the dapanese after the wat. | stand; according: to Premier be

a Premiex Duplessis said his goy- | ©. Dougias.

Sermment would take * “necessary | ‘Manitoba withheld nese

efene’? le orment their xetiting UNL! recedving notification of the &

RELUCT.

iy

_ More than 5 ; ‘women and children
‘boarded the American transport Marine Falcon here this
morning to begin the long voyage to Japan—and many of
them expressed a reluctance to leave Canada, adopted home
‘of the adults, birthplace of most of the children. They sail
‘early tomorrow.

} ‘ canada and te prairie prov.
— ot? - Praca “Approximately 3800 Japanese

heen returned to their:

This is the opinion of some of poten while another 200, ac |
Hcials af the department of Iabor rine to the a Srionst

|who point out that of approx. |fONS OO Ou! fopariment of)

Hipor are ready te leave. ‘The
>?
imately 22.000 peer seman | departraent. hopes

Pp ee tev nen ne enennnenesinnnennns

to he abie re |
entain a hoet next munath jo aes

June-July 1976/47

FIL REVIEWS

and aloof, but in this film it works
extremely well; the very distance of
the words adds to the strength of the
pictures. The net result in that the
outrage occurs not as rhetoric on
the screen but in the hearts of the
audience. The facts pile up, coolly,
one on top of another; the pictures
proceed, not horror pictures but a
family eating lunch in a wooden cabin
in the interior of British Columbia,
a school play, a wedding, ordinary
Canadians taking snaps with their
Kodak. And you watch the events un-
fold and you shake your head. Who
are the persecutors, why is this hap-
pening here?

There is a bit of irony in the fact
that the National Film Board should
be the organization producing a film
like this. During the second world
war, they were one of the chief pur-
veyors of government propaganda in
series like The World in Action
shown bimonthly in theatres across
North America. One such screen
editorial, The Mask of Nippon (avail-
able for rental through McGill Uni-
versity’s film library) used all the
considerable skill and power charac-
teristic of the series to produce a
message of hate worthy of Joseph
Goebbels. ‘“‘The soldiers of the rising

sun are little men,’ booms Lorne
Greene, narrator of the series, “‘two-
faced; with a modern and progressive
surface thinly hiding their savage and
barbaric double character!” It was
wartime and anything went, but the
appeal of the film was clearly racist;
in interesting contrast with the mild
and reasonable manner in which simi-
lar films treated our Caucasian
enemies. The films that the NFB
made during the war well reflected
the spirit of the times and the re-
spective fate of these two groups of
immigrants.

The power of Enemy Alien is that
it is not a sermon, in no way a preachy
film. Its message, while never stat-
ed, is clear. Canada is a country
formed by its immigrants but it has
not been kind to all its immigrants.
Our system of justice and democracy
in which we all place such trust can
bend to political expediency. Our land
has been good to many but is also a
country built on the exploitation of
others. And we too are capable of
“savage and barbaric forces’ which
must continually be kept in check. To
remind us is this film and the haunt-
ing faces of our fellow Canadians —
the enemy that never was.

Ronald Blumer

position will begin on September 1, 1976.

Qualifications:

both its use and maintenance.

Duties:

equipment.
— Inventory control;

1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West
Montreal, Quebec, H3G 1M8, Canada

48/ Cinema Canada

CINEMA TECHNICIAN

The Faculty of Fine Arts’ Division of Visual Arts invites applications for the
position of Cinema Technician to serve its expanding Cinema programme. The

— A knowledge of film production equipment and demonstrable experience in

— The desire and the ability to work with students at various levels, and to pro-
vide assistance to both students and faculty when required.

— Competence to organize and administer cinema supplies and equipment for
approximately 200 film production students.

Bilingualism is considered an asset (French/English).

— To carry out minor repairs, and to ensure that all equipment is properly used
and maintained in good working order.

— To instruct students, as necessary, in the proper handling, care and use of

booking and dispensing of equipment, and seeing to its
return; keeping records of the use, repairs and maintenance of equipment.

— The ordering and dispensing of supplies.

To assist with the supervision of all production facilities.

The salary will depend upon the applicant’s qualifications and experience.

Applications should be accompanied by a complete curriculum vitae and the
names of three persons as references. The closing date for applications is
August 2, 1976, or when the position is filled.

Please address all inquiries and/or applications to:
Associate Professor Judith Kelly Director, Division of Visual Arts
Faculty of Fine Arts Concordia University

concordia
university

CLASSIFIED

Classified ads cost 50 cents a word and
should be submitted, typewritten, double
spaced. The ads must be pre-paid by check
or money order made out to Cinema Canada
and sent to Box 398, Outremont Station,
Montreal H2V 4N3, P.Q.

For Sale:

Two Audio RMS7F radio microphones, re-
cently factory overhauled. $750 each or
both $1400. G.C.M. Sound Services, 4 Landi-
go Drive, Weston, Ontario M9R 3P6. Phone
416-249-3596.

For Sale:
One Siemens 2000 16 mm interlock projec-
tor. $1,000. G.C.M. Sound Services, 4 Lan-

digo Drive, Weston, Ontario M9R 3P6.
Phone 416-249-3596.
For Rent:

Work space and/or editing facilities. Long
or short term. Very reasonable rates. Down-
town Toronto. Call Tony Douglas Associates:
922-9081 or 366-1460.

Wanted:

Single system for Arriflex B.L. amplifier
and sound heads, eight mm. Ziess lens.
Bill Kerrigan, 2-28 Sweetland, Ottawa, On-
tario. 613-236-6362.

For Sale:

Nagra IV S, Uher CR 210 cassette w/synch
input. Regular $895., special $625.50. Mil-
lar’s Hardware (& Stereo?) 416-486-9655 or
416-485-0461.

cine

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Action Film Services 20
Alex. L. Clark 14,45
All Canadian Answering Service 20
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Distribution Centre 20
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Equipment Rental 14

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Publishers’ Association 2
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Film House 26,27
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M.S. Art Services 17:
National Film Board 51
Quinn and Mirrophonic 52
Robert Crone c.s.c. 20
Sonolab 35

CAPSULES

Propaganda Message: (NFB) Bouncy un-
cluttered cartoon in two languages at once
(alternate subtitles) which shows the na-
tives in snow and sleet and sun in all
manner of ways. Nerenberg and Arioli
and Information Canada are to blame for
this very funny Canadian comment on

Canada and the forever-snowed Canadian
people. 13 minutes 20 seconds. C 35 mm
(NE)

id ot

o—™

Mask of Nippon: (NFB from The World
in Action series, 1942) One of the worst
examples of NFB _ wartime propaganda,
reflecting crudely the racist overtones of
this desperate period. The majority of
The World in Action releases underscored
humanistic values and promised that the
common man the world over would emerge
from the war victorious. (GE)

Enemy Alien: Dir. Jeannette Lerman (NFB).
The sad story of the Japanese-Canadians
during the Second World War, the intern-
ment camps, the confiscation of their goods
and, for some, their deportation — all with-
out a shred of evidence of their disloyalty.
The quiet photographs from the scrap-
books of the Japanese themselves and the
quiet narration create a mounting rage
at the magnitude of the injustice. (RB)

Just a Minute: One-minute quickies made
by women from all over Canada as part
of a training program at the NFB’s in-
tegrated Studio D. Six examples: Headache
by the Vancouver Collective, Reel Feelings,
depicts a woman reciting her desperate
wants and needs, but wipes out its effect
with an easy laugh-off ending as a man
listening to her notes that he ‘has troubles
too’. Moira Simpson and Liz Walker of
Vancouver made Can You Hear Me?, again
more amusing than punchy, in which a lady

shouts these words in the street to a non-’

responsive public. But Categorization by
Montreal's Tina Horne, by contrast, pack-
ed a real punch. This excellent bit simply
showed a young person of 10 or 11 full
frame, and as sexist clichés were recited
voice-over (girls should be neat... boys
don’t cry, etc.) a slow zoom brought the
child closer until only the eyes stared out
from the screen, while the audience continu-

. fluences

ed to wonder if it was a boy or a girl.
From Montreal alse was It’s No Yolk by
Terri Nash, a playful cut-out animated
world of women emerging from an egg-
shaped globe to illustrate that half the
world’s population is female. Witches by
Toronto's Joan Hutton took another look

at the sorceresses of the past and the-

politics that persecuted them, and _ finally,
Margaret Pettigrew’s Interview used role
reversal to point out unfair hiring practices.
Dist.: write Studio D, P43, National Film
Board, Box 6100. Montreal. (NE)

My Friends Call Me Tony: Dir. Beverly
Shaffer (NFB). A delightful documentary
about a 10-year-old boy leading a normal
and fulfilled life despite his blindness.
The film is narrated by himself and covers
his training in activities of daily living at
the Montreal Institute for the Blind. The
film shows him shopping, playing the piano,
cooking, playing hockey and just messing
around being a kid. In some parts the film
is a bit stagey, but it is helped by the
natural and spontaneous narration. (RB)

Goldwood: (NFB) Kathleen Shannon's per-
sonal trip into her past is an autobiographi-
cal exploration of her memories and _in-
which is made accessible and
charming by Blake James’ appealing water-
colors, and her quiet, frank voice-over
commentary. 21 minutes. C 16 & 35 mm. (NE)

Years of Struggle is a biographical portrait
of Leonard Hutchinson, printmaker, whose
artwork on Depression Canada is present-
ed as a graphic document of the nation’s
torn social fabric. The film’s attraction
is less to the man and his sojourns than
to the natural movement and depth which
the camera discovers in his prints. By

Gloria Monteyo and David Fulton, 93 Pears
Ave., Toronto. 26 min. C 16mm. (GE)

Creating Space: Dir. Peter Lauterman.
The film documents the establishment of
an artists’ living, selling and working
space in a factory building in Toronto.
It is a_ slick assemblage of interviews
with the organizer of the project, Charles
Pachter, as well as some of the artists in

by Natalie Edwards, Ronald
H. Blumer and Gary Evans

the building. It comes across as a some-
what scattered document, but one which
could be used as a lively study tool for
people interested in setting up similar
co-op efforts, no matter what the field.
25 min. C 16 mm, Gatineau Productions,
24 Ryerson Ave., Toronto. (RB)

A Matter of Choice: The film shifts from
demonstrating a community's helplessness
in the face of social decisions taken in
favor of nuclear power without their know-
ledge to the formation of citizens’ pressure
groups to represent the voice of the many.
The important question of health hazards
in uranium mining is raised by a dying
victim who tells his story. Dist.: Tetra
Media Productions, Box 188, Station B,
Toronto. 28 min. C 16 mm. (GE)

Beyond Shelter: Strongly influenced by the
1937. documentary classic Housing Prob-
lems, this refreshingly optimistic film
investigates the differences in care of the
elderly in North America and in Denmark,
emphasizing the humor, self-reliance and
social integration of the Danish elders.
North American audiences learn how they
too can plan for care of the aged. By Ron
Blumer. Dist.: Film Library, McGill Uni-
versity, P.O. Box 6070, Station A, Mont-
real. 25 min. C 16 mm. (GE)

Limited Engagement: Tom Braidwood is
concerned with media manipulation of
people, and this short devastating attack
on the uncritical audience infuriates those
who fall into its cruel trap. Brilliant and
brutal. Dist.: contact Pacific Cinematheque,
1616 West 3rd Ave., Vancouver. (NE)

Cream Soda: Dir. Holly Dale. Bad sound
and dim red light do not seriously harm
but rather enhance this direct-cinema
look at the inside of a body-rub parlor.
Uneven, and roughly put-together, the 12-
minute short carries an air of authentici-
ty as we eavesdrop on some unusual shop-
talk. CC: 23:39. Dist.: CFMDC, 406 Jarvis
St., Toronto. (NE)

They Call Us Les Filles du Roy: (NFB)
One of six in a Challenge for Change series
concerning female life, this 90 minutes
combines a poetic political approach with
direct cinema and collage for a cumulative
comment on the Quebecoise, past, present,
and future. It is eclectic and evocative with
a strong emotional base tying its disparate
elements and superficially miscellaneous

material together. Anne Claire Poirer and
Margo Blackburn. (NE)

Wind Fron the West is obviously Tom
Braidwood’s nod to Godard as he examines
another culture and its extinction. Extended
slow fades and long slow shots capture
something of the tragic loss of a society
of western Indians in BC through old
photographs. Dist.: contact Pacific Cine-
matheque, 1616 West 3rd Ave., Vancouver.
(NE)

Potlatch. Dir. Dennis Wheeler. Solidly re-
searched, strongly motivated, the film re-
veals the injustice of the infamous Potlach
laws that forbade the Indians their ancient
iribal rites by which surplus wealth was
exchanged for status. Documentary footage,
old film clips, stills and dramatic recon-
structions present the evidence in depth.
53 minutes. C 16 mm. CC: 21:49. Dist.:
Pacific Cinematheque, 1616 W. 3rd Ave.,

Vancouver, B.C. V6J 1K2 (West) and
CFMDC, 406 Jarvis St., Toronto (East).
(NE)

Cree Hunters of Mistassini (NFB) portrays
the major aspects of the Cree hunting
culture of the James Bay region. The
coming of technological society and the
power project may destroy all this. When
the film was shown in Mistassini, it inspir-
ed dozens of Cree to leave temporarily
for the bush to rediscover their heritage.
58 min. C. (GE)

Serpent River Paddlers: Dir. Anthony Hall.
Surprise of surprises, a documentary about
Indians in Canada that is not depressing. The
film shows the successes of the Huron In-
dians in Quebec, their full employment and
wealth through industries mixing mass pro-

duction and traditional techniques. Their
story is imaginatively told through the inter-
cutting of the manufacturing activities (250,-
000 pairs of snowshoes last year) with a
canoe race and portage held each summer
on the reservation. The film is unfortunate-
ly very television in both content and style,
but presents an interesting contrast to most
films available on the subject. 14 min. C.
Dist.: Film Arts, 461 Church St., Toronto.

. (RB)

June-July 1976/49

CAPSULES

Cold Journey: Dir. Martin Defalco. “It is
no good learning to be an Indian: the Indian
ways are dead. Learn to be a white man!”
Buckley is taken away from his Cree pa-
rents as a young child and sent to white
boarding schools. He does not know his own
language and has little understanding of his
people’s culture. This dramatic film tells
of his yearning to find his roots, a desire
ultimately frustrated by well-meaning whites.
The cultural no-man’s-land experienced by
the native people, particularly the young,
is powerfully presented in this film with no
simple answers provided. White civiliza-
tion is portrayed through Indian eyes as
brutal, neurotic and unrelentingly ugly,
while Chief Dan George is at his fatherly
best as the archetypal Indian figure. NFB
feature length. (RB)

50/ Cinema Canada

Voleano: Dir. Donald Brittain (NFB). Brit-
tain (Bethune, Lord Thomson of Fleet, Leo-
nard Cohen) has reached a new peak of cine-
biography in this brilliant portrait of Mal-
colm Lowry. The film takes us through his
long struggle with alcohol and the devil and
the production of his one great novel, Under
the Volcano, a life’s work which cost him
everything. Images from Mexico where Low-
ry wrote the book combined with readings
by Richard Burton meld together into an all-
feeling, all-seeing, alcoholic high reaching
beyond the words and pictures of Lowry’s
life, into his very soul. This is not a

literary film or one for specialists, it is a
two-hour experience which drills deep into
the subconscious, going well beyond conven-
tional documentary or fiction. (RB)

Aucassin and Nicolette: Lotte Reininger is
alive and well, and made this delicate and
timeless silhouette animation of the old
fairy tale while at the NFB on special invita-
tion in 1975. (NE)

Boo-Hoo: (NFB). A comic irrelevancy ex-
tricated from Atlantic Canada, in which a
retired cemetery curator offers a Cook’s
cemetery tour of the deceased of St. John,
N.B. Surveying his eternal domain, he re-
marks in dialect that the unmarked graves
are located in a corner of the cemetery
which has the best drainage and sandy soil.
Perhaps this is a social statement about
divine justice. (GE)

Backlot Canadiana: Dir. Peter Rowe. This
is the painfully funny account of how our
potential Canadian film quota plans were
scrapped in 1946 for mere mentions of our
country in Hollywood films. In a lively 20
minutes you can get the same sense of in-
dignation and irony that Berton’s well-doc-
umented tome Hollywood’s Canada delivers
rather more heavily. CC: 20: 62. Dist.: P.
Rowe, 9 Cunningham Ave., Toronto, Ont.,
1974. (NE)

LF. Stone’s Weekly: An intimate look at
crusading journalist I.F. Stone, whose anti-
Vietnam War propaganda was vindicated
after years of relentless opposition. Timing,
pacing and cuts of newsreel footage become
a visual allegory for the victory of one
man’s reason over many others’ madness
in a liberal democracy which had become
ill. By Jerry Bruck. Dist.: Open Circle
Cinema, 3668 Park Ave., Montreal. (GE)

Haiti: Dir. Peter Rowe. A slick sensa-
tionalist travelogue, a cross between Jaco-
pedi’s Mondo Cane and something Eastern
Airlines might turn out. The film tells us
that all is beaches and cream with happy
natives dancing and voodooing in colorful
costumes, protected by their ever-friendly
secret police. 1975. 28 minutes C 16 mm.
Produced by Rosebud Films. Available from
Viking Films in Canada. (RB)

Holy Ganges is an Occidental’s fascination
with India’s religious culture built around
the Ganges River. Parade, festival bodies
rotting in the Ganges and cremation on its
banks are all recorded for their effects as

spectacle. Where is Mrs. Gandhi's India?
By Karl Shiffman. (GE)

Impressions of China: Don McWilliams has
edited film from a group of 25 students who
visited China, and backed by taped comments
from two of them, produced a view of China
that is revealing in its limitations rather
than its breadth. 22 min. C 16 mm. Dist.:
Marlin Pictures, 47 Lakeshore Rd. East.
Port Credit, Ont. (NE)

Glimpses of China (NFB) (Images de Chine)
may be China as the Chinese experience it.
The film's mirror-like quality appears to
allow nothing from the outside to impose
itself. The slow tempo lets selected aspects
of Chinese life permeate one’s conscious-
ness. Photographed with a kind of ‘innocent
eye’ technique and devoid of commentary,
this film is a refreshing alternative to the
many “‘let’s understand China” films of
today. China is inscrutable. (GE)

Temiskaming workers reopen their town’s
mill and become joint owners with private
capital and two governments. The euphoria
of victory is dashed with the realization that
workers are still alienated in the capitalist
milieu and that pride in their labor can come
only with their complete ownership of the
mill. By Martin Duckworth for Challenge
for Change (NFB). In two parts. (GE)

PR ge CRO RE TE AT ORAL TAT SIRE ETL RIT PETER TI SNE LITE TT

High Grass Circus follows a tent circus
drifting from town to town. Performers.
animals and vehicles are mired in a routine
of less-than-mediocre showmanship, ex-
emplified by the creation of “El Flamo”,
the human blowtorch, in five minutes and
the travails of the lady on the high rope
whose stuck foot leaves her dangling in
air. This is Fellini without the make-up.
(GE)

Salvador Allende Gossens: (NFB). Not real-
ly a film but an interesting document of
several speeches made by Allende to a group
of visiting Canadian miners and union of-
ficials. Despite the forced circumstances
and long monologues, the warmth, humanity
and intelligence of the assassinated leader
comes through. He compares Chile with
Canada — ‘‘We both have political independ-
ence but our primary task must be to get
control of the real center of power, the
economy...” (RB)

Campaneiro is a BBC documentary on mar-
tyred Chilean folksinger Victor Jara, who
is portrayed as more than a friend and
more than a fellow worker in Allende’s Chile.
Jara’s wife recounts painfully and personal-
ly the horror of the fascist victory over Al-
lende. The film impresses the audience
powerfully, summoning up the collective
guilt of the rich and liberal West. (GE)

Selling Out: Sentimental, tedious and turgid,
this is a contrived burlesque, about an old
man on Prince Edward Island who sells the
family farm. The film could have been
called Dead End. By Tad Jaworski. (GE)

The Working Class on Film: (NFB). By Su-
san Schouten. Peter Raymond, editor. An
inspiring propaganda piece on John Grier-
son’s philosophy of film propaganda. Re-
miniscent of the hard-hitting idealistic
messages of the Second World War, it sings
a paeon to the working class and demon-
strates how the documentary idea is waiting
to be resuscitated and applied to the films
of the ’70s. (GE)

Metamorphosis: Dir. Barry Greenwald. Official
Canadian entry in the Short Films
Category, Cannes, 1976: Bob Green performs
with skill as the everyday ordinary bour-
geois man who adds an element of excite-
ment and adventure to his regular daily
routine by incredible additions to the sur-
prising number of things he learns to man-
age alone in an elevator, going down. Under
the pixillated humor lies an ominous sense
of futility and the brief 10-minute film is
strongly controlled for subtle effect. B/
W. CC: 23: 38. Dist.: Faroun Films. P:
Conestoga College, 1975. (NE)

Une production de A production of
| Office national du film du Canada ~ the National Film Board of Canada

_Le film officiel des Jeux de la The official film of the Games of the
XXle Olympiade Montréal, 1976 XX! Olympiad Montreal, 1976

Distribution internationale juin 1977 International distribution June. 1977

Pour plus de détails entrer en contact avec. For more details contact

Denis Belleville Denis Belleville

Delégué général a la distribution General Delegate for distribution
Case postale 6100 P.O. Box 6100

Montréal. Qué... Canada H3C 3H5 Montreal. Que.. Canada H3C 3H5
Teléphone (514) 333-3399 Telephone: (514) 333-3399

Telex 05826680 Telex: 05826680

Cablogramme Cannatfilm. Montréal Cable: Cannatfilm. Montréal

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Bureaux de National Film

VOffice national du film Board of Canada

du Canada Offices

Canada United States Japan Australia

P.O. Box 16th Floor England France c/o Canadian Embassy 9th Floor. AMP Centre
Case postale 6100 1251 Avenue of the Americas 1 Grosvenor Square 15. rue de Berri 7-3-38, Akasaka. Minato-ku 50 Bridge Street

Montreal. Quebec H3C 3H5 ~— New York. NY 10020 London, W1X 0AB 75008 Paris Tokyo. Japan 107 Sydney. N.S.W.. 2000

inter-video inc. 5000 ouest, rue Wellington 145 Wellington St. West
Verdun, Montréal, Qué. H4G 1X9 Toronto, Ont., M5J 1H8, Canada
(514) 761-4851 (416) 361-0306

Toronto
April 14, 1976

Mr. Fin Quinn,

Quinn Laboratories Limited,
380 Adelaide Street West,
Toronto, Ontario.

Dear Fin:

Thank you indeed for your reply to my letter of February
27, 1976 and for your cooperation in the various tests we
conducted. It is with great pleasure that I can inform you
that Quinn has been selected to handle all our laboratory
work and Mirrophonic all our sound requirements on this
production. I know you share my view that this whole
decision-making process has been done in an open and
professional way and I can assure you that Imperial Oil
Limited, who shared with us in these deliberations are
fully confident of the talents and skills that your or-
ganization will bring to this task.

I should like us to have an early meeting with Fern Aube
to organize logistical details and I shall probably prepare
a more formal document accepting your bid and attaching
the terms and conditions to which you agreed as supple-
mentary documentation.

I trust that we will see you at the announcement tomorrow.

Be l regards,

be

Pat Ferns
Director of Production

PF/Ib